


Water Goddess

by Pink_Siamese



Series: Ultraviolence [1]
Category: Criminal Minds, The Cell
Genre: Abduction, Bisexual Female Character, Blood and Gore, Bondage, Chains, Chloroform, Confinement, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Cunnilingus, Cutting, Dreams, Drowning, Dubious Consent, F/M, Graphic Description, Hallucinations, Murder, Non-Consensual Bondage, Not Suitable/Safe For Work, Piercings, Recreational Drug Use, References to Aztec Religion & Lore, Scarification, Sexual Content, Stalking, Stockholm Syndrome, Wordcount: 30.000-50.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-14
Updated: 2010-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-06 07:19:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 26
Words: 36,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pink_Siamese/pseuds/Pink_Siamese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhiannon Heath, ER nurse and part-time piercer, finds herself drawn into Carl Stargher's hypnotically strange, erotic, and violent world. A year and a half later, Carl is unconscious and the BAU follows a trail of bleached bodies straight into Rhiannon's past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Superman

"There's something not right about that guy."

Rhiannon peered over Steve's shoulder. They were huddled in back behind the beaded pink curtain, sneaking a shared cigarette next to the cracked window. The window offered a view of the alley and the backsides of buildings running along Oleander. Steve's comment pulled her out of her contemplation of the graffiti scrawled on Canton Express's dumpster. She turned on a small fan and angled it so the smoke blew out the window. She turned around and watched the guy approach Ronnie Boy, a Filipino tattoo artist with spiky hair and a vertical labret she'd pierced for him when she first started. The guy exchanged a few mumbled words with Ronnie Boy. The tattoo artist strolled over to the appointment book and flipped it open.

"I don't know," said Rhiannon. "Maybe he's just shy."

Steve slid the cigarette out of her fingers. He pinched a long drag, held it to her lips so she could suck in the last of it, and stubbed out the filter an empty Friskies can balanced on the windowsill. Steve studied the guy: tall, hunched shoulders, mousy hair half in his face, long sleeves under an old T-shirt, baggy jeans. He stood with his feet close together and his clasped hands held tight against his belt. Rhiannon watched him. She was reminded first of a schoolboy, then of something injured and tremulous—a young animal fallen out of its nest, perhaps, turned out by a strong storm or by the impact of a car colliding with its tree.

"How much you wanna bet he needs to use the bathroom?"

"The Pink doesn't have public bathroom access," said Rhiannon. "Sign's taped right on the door."

"Yeah, but that don't stop some people."

Ronnie Boy picked up a red pen and made a notation. Steve's pierced eyebrows lifted and he folded his arms. "Well holy fuck and a hot cha-cha, would you look at that. Dude's got an actual appointment."

Rhiannon scowled at the small mirror hanging on the wall. She picked a flake of tobacco off her tongue.

"Yeah, don't you have a three o'clock?"

"Yeah, don't you?"

"I think so. But it's not until three fifteen." She rotated the heavy gauge hoops in her ears and glanced at him. "Holy fuck and a hot cha-cha?"

Steve gave her a one-sided grin. "Something my gramma used to say."

Ronnie Boy angled his head around. He looked through the beaded curtain and made a come-hither gesture. Steve and Rhiannon pointed at each other. Ronnie Boy grinned and shook his head. He made pistols of both hands, pointing them at Rhiannon. He cocked his thumbs.

"Aw yeah," chuckled Steve. "I'm just so sorry I didn't bet. I'd be ordering up Canton Express right about now."

"I wouldn't eat their cockroach lo mein." Rhiannon stuck her tongue out at him.

"No thanks. We got toilet paper for that."

Rhiannon turned and shoved Steve into the doorframe. He fell into it and cackled. She turned her head and stuck her tongue out at him again and moved aside the curtain, walking out into the area behind the counter.

The guy stood beside the cash register. He shuffled his feet a little. He glanced at her face and looked away. She drew closer and he looked at her again through his hair and this time he didn't look away. Rhiannon smiled at him. She was used to the attention; her height, albino coloring, and quarter inch of hair generated a lot of stares. This was before they got a look at her tattoos: full sleeves of black thorny vines and blue flowers, a small green hummingbird with wings spread on the back of each wrist. Once people got a look at her ink and the contrast of the vivid colors against her colorless skin, staring often dissolved into out-and-out fascination.

"Hi, I'm Rhiannon, your friendly neighborhood piercer." She heard Steve snickering. She reached behind her back and gave him the finger.

"Hi. I'm Carl." He was soft-spoken. "I have an appointment at three fifteen?"

"What can I do for you, Carl?"

"Um." He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it and spread it open on the counter. "This."

Rhiannon picked it up. Sketched on it was a diagram of what looked like DaVinci's man. Eight rings paralleled the spine, four on each side. Faint lines sketched their distance from each other, the shoulders, the spinal column, and the uppermost ridge of the hips. A series of handwritten numbers formed a neat column. Notes along the bottom specified the diameter, gauge, and composition of the rings. She looked up from the paper to his face. He inspected her expression. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and tilted her head, stroking the nape of her neck.

"You want all of this done today?"

His hands went in his pockets. "Yes."

"Okay." She went behind the counter and fetched a release form. "I need you to fill this out and I need to make a copy of your driver's license."

"I have the others done already." His voice lowered. "The…arms, and the ones on the backs of my legs. I had them done here."

"It must've been Otho who did them."

Carl nodded. "Uh-huh."

"About a year ago? Or more?" Rhiannon folded up the diagram and shoved it into the back pocket of her jeans. "Otho's been back in Germany about that long."

"Yes." He took his wallet out of his back pocket. "Do you…do you want the money first?"

Rhiannon smiled and shook her head. He handed her his license. She took it. "Nope. Needles first, dollars second. I need to go make a copy of this. I'll be right back."

She looked at the picture on his license as she wandered into the back room. She paused and turned it over, then scanned the front for the expiration date.

"Pssst." Steve stuck his head out of the autoclave closet. "So what's he in for?"

"Jesus Christ, Stephen." She swung at his head and he ducked. "You scared the righteous fuck out of me."

"Prince Albert?"

"You'll never believe it."

"Apadravya?

"No." Rhiannon opened the scanner and centered the license on the glass. "Permanent suspension piercings. Rather, he wants to complete his collection of permanent suspension piercings. For a grand total of fourteen."

"Superman?"

"Yep."

"That's killer. Can you do it?"

She leveled him with a look. "Yes. I can do it."

"It's pretty intense. The skin is thick. You have to pierce pretty deep."

Rhiannon tucked the photocopy into a file folder. "Why don't you worry about your own fucking job?"

"I've got a girl out there who wants a unicorn." He rolled his eyes. "A rainbow one. On the small of her back."

"My condolences."

"You get to do something cool. While I go forth and do another tramp stamp. My jealousy burns. It burns us, precioussss."

"Long live the tramp stamp. Knock not the tramp stamp, for it pays your bills."

"So true." Steve gathered up packets of sterilized needles. He glanced into the waiting room. "Shit. It's always the quiet ones, isn't it?"

"I don't care if he's quiet." Rhiannon clipped the license to the file folder. "He is single-handedly making my rent for next month."

"You should give him a kiss and say thank you."

"You should go whack off out the window."

Steve burst out laughing. "I'll get right on that."

"Don't forget the gloves."

"Oh, the humor."

Rhiannon strode out into the waiting room. Carl sat on the overstuffed couch with his knees together and the clipboard balanced on them. He looked up at her.

"All set?"

"Yeah." He handed it over.

"Okay." She unclipped the form and slipped it into the folder. She handed him his license. "Your license."

He stood up and retrieved his wallet. "Thank you."

"Follow me."

"No," he said. "I mean…thank you."

"Hey don't mention it. I should say thank you, really," she said. "This is far and away the most interesting piercing I've done." She stepped to one side and held open the beaded curtain for him. "I've done a few corsets, but nothing like this."

Carl looked around as he stepped through the doorway. He took in the framed documents on the walls, a bulletin board, a large calendar covered in handwriting, and framed photographs of tattoos. His eyes followed the lines of beads. "I didn't know Otho had gone back to Germany. I just…just assumed." He shrugged a shoulder. "You know."

Rhiannon let the curtain fall. "We can cancel this if you aren't comfortable. I'd totally understand. No hard feelings. I promise."

"No." Carl shook his head. "No. I want to."

"All right. Step into my office."

She grinned at him over her shoulder and led him into a small room with a massage table made up in black flannel sheets. The walls were painted a dark blue and hung with framed photographs of body modifications: an elegant Asian model with a nose stud and three rings strung through her bottom lip, a young man with a blue Mohawk and horns implanted in his forehead, a captive bead ring adorning the hollow of a disembodied dark-skinned throat. A small rolling steel table similar to the kind employed by dental hygienists stood in one corner. The room was well-lit, temperature controlled, and hidden speakers piped in music.

"I'll step out while you undress," she said. "If it's too cold in here just let me know and I'll turn the heat up. Okay?"

"You don't have to step out."

Rhiannon stopped. "What?"

He took his shirt off. "It's just a shirt."

"Okay." She walked away from the door and went to a chest of drawers. She opened one and rummaged through it. "Whatever works."

He sat on the table and watched her. "Your tattoos are pretty."

Her face warmed. "Oh, hey. Thanks." She glanced at her arms. "Ronnie Boy did them for me. The design, the application, everything. I guess he was inspired for these by the covers of those Flowers In The Attic books, I don't know. He was in into this whole retro art phase at the time? I didn't care because he's just that good. I really liked it. It was loads better than anything I could've come up with. It took forever to actually do it or at least it felt like forever…I mean, just the outlining took four appointments. And the colors…whew." She showed him the backs of her wrists. "The hummingbirds last. The detail work really hurt. See that green and turquoise coloring? It's fresh. Maybe four months old."

He held her eyes for a moment. He looked at her hands. "It's beautiful work."

"If you're ever in the market for ink Ronnie Boy's your guy. He's amazing." Rhiannon liberated a box of gloves, sterilized needles, and packets of sterilized rings. She picked a bunch of clamps and tossed them onto the hygienist's table. "I think I've got more rings in here somewhere. I hope so. Otherwise I'll only be able to—hold on, I'll be right back. I'm going to check the closet. This'll just take a second."

"Oh. Okay."

Rhiannon slipped out into the hallway and trotted to the closet. She opened the door and went inside, switched on the overhead light and closed the door to a crack. Inside were a couple of battered bureaus and stacks of cluttered shelves. She took in a deep breath and tried to visualize the backup body jewelry. The last time she'd need to come in here for a labret it was…where? She opened a middle drawer and found inks. She opened a bottom one and found clamps, needle gun stuff, sterile cotton pads. She stood on tiptoe and peered at the topmost shelves. She found the rings, dusty in their sterile packaging, lounging behind an ancient bleach bottle. What the fuck? She tried to remember tossing them back there and couldn't. _I didn't put them back there. No way I did. I hate not being able to find my shit and it was probably that fucking Ronnie Boy_. She took another breath and let it out through her teeth. She turned and headed back down the hall. _Calm, serenity, oxygen, fucking tranquility. Sparkly blue beach shit. Fruity fucking drinks. It doesn't matter. Get it together._

She tossed the rings on her palm. She bit her lip and opened the door.

Carl was still sitting there. He turned his head and looked at her.

"All good, I've secured the booty." She grinned and showed him the rings. "So if you're ready, and you don't have any questions for me, please assume the position. I'll do something about this music, too. It's getting on my nerves."

"I like the music."

"Well, you're paying." Rhiannon lined the hygienist's table with a sterile absorbent pad and arrayed her supplies. "So I guess if you like it I'll keep it on."

"You don't. Have to." He shifted on the table. "I…I'll be all right."

She started to smile. "Are you sure?"

He climbed onto his hands and knees. "I don't want you to be unhappy."

She stopped what she was doing. She watched as he settled onto his stomach.

_Fruity fucking drinks._

"Okay. I'm going to measure out and mark the places with a felt-tip." Rhiannon took the drawing out of her pocket. "Do I have permission to touch you, Carl?"

His shoulder twitched. "Yes," he whispered.

_Calm. Serenity. Oxygen._

"Okay," she said.

She consulted his diagram, then consulted her memory. She brought a soft tape measure out of a drawer, unrolled it, and lined it up with his spine. It warmed to the temperature of his skin. She leaned over him and used a fine point washable marker to make tiny marks at corresponding numbers. The tape measure moved up and down with his breath. She steadied it with her fingertips. The precision of her action calmed her thoughts. She turned the tape measure and lined it up crosswise with the lower edges of his scapulae. Her fingers relaxed as she did the same with his floating ribs, the crests of his hipbones, the lower segments of his tailbone. She made an invisible grid of his skin and drew the lines in her mind. On a long exhaled breath she calculated the placement of the rings. She wiped the skin down with alcohol pads and marked the places with black ink. Goosebumps rose and swept up his flanks. She rubbed the survey marks off with gauze.

"Hold still," she murmured. "Just let me take a picture."

Rhiannon tossed the tape measure back into the bottom drawer and pulled out a digital camera. She caught an image and brought the camera around to the head of the table. She held the screen below the face cradle.

"Is this all right?"

"Yes. It's perfect."

She smiled. "Good."

She put the camera to one side and snapped on a pair of gloves. Her eyes swept the expanse of his back. The black ink stood out in the strong overhead light. "I know you know what to expect, but I'm going to tell you anyway. I'm going to pinch your skin and lift it with my fingers. Then I'm going to clamp it in place. I need you to keep your arms at your sides because moving them will shift the skin of the back." She wanted to lower her palm with these words, to touch between his shoulder blades. "I need the skin to remain still. Do you understand?"

"Yes. I understand."

"Are you going to hold still for me?"

His breath hitched. "Yes. I will hold still."

Rhiannon placed her hand on his skin and framed the first mark with her thumb and forefinger. "Good."  
She took in a breath and gathered up the loose skin, securing the fold with a hard pinch. She lifted it away from the underlying structure. She positioned the clamp and let go. The metal bit in. The skin blanched. She left the clamp in place and unwrapped a needle. She unpackaged the ring. She picked up the needle and bent down over his back and rested her forearm on his skin. She balanced the needle between her fingers.

"I have the needle, Carl," she said. "I want you to take in a breath for me and hold it. On the count of three I want you to release that breath. Do it slowly. I'm going to put the needle in. Do you understand?"

"Yes. I understand."

"One." She felt his ribs expand. "Two. Three."

His breath released in a long slow sigh. She exhaled with him and pushed the needle through, willing her strength into his skin. A small amount of blood stained the hollow tip. She left the needle balanced at the midpoint. She straightened up and retrieved the ring off the hygienist's table.

"Now for the ring," she said. "You're going to feel the needle moving."

"O-Okay."

She aligned the edge of the ring with the needle and slipped it though. She rotated the ring, easing the clamp off the skin. The paleness dissipated and the skin filled with a pleasant shade of pink. The area started to swell. She used pliers to secure the captive bead.

"There." She became aware of the sweat on her forehead. "One down."

"You don't…have any. I noticed. Piercings, I mean."

Rhiannon pinched the skin opposite. She tugged it and brought her eyes level to his skin and situated the clamp. "I have them. They're in hidden places."

"Oh."

"I have two barbells in each nipple. Kind of like a cross. I used to have lip rings but they got in the way. You know, the important stuff: eating, kissing, giving head. I got tired of them catching on my other lip and on my teeth and on other people's teeth and getting yanked on." She unwrapped and positioned a fresh needle. "Okay, I'm going in. Give me a breath. One. Two. Three."

His chest didn't move.

"Dammit, Carl, come on." Her arm tensed and she mouthed a stream of silent profanity. "Look, I'm sorry, that was unprofessional in the extreme, but I need you to take a breath. A nice deep breath. No breath, no needle. This is me counting. One. Two." He drew in a deep breath and her tone dropped in pitch and went silky. "That's it, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Three." She drew out the word _three_ as she pushed the second needle through. She moved quick, unwrapping and positioning the ring. She slid the ring into place and loosened the clamps. "Hey, sorry if the nipple thing offended you. Be glad you didn't get Tatiana, this chick I used to work with here. Not only would she have told you about her pussy piercings but she would've whipped up her skirt and showed you." Rhiannon felt herself blush. She brushed her cheek against her shoulder before fixing the bead into place. "There. Now look at that. What a pretty pair."

"Did you…did you do it yourself? The nipples?"

"Oh no, no. I had them done a couple years ago on a trip to Toronto."

"Oh."

"Yeah." She stepped along the side of the table. "I'm getting ready to clamp the next one."

"Okay."

In the silence she punctured the third hole and threaded it with titanium. She fixed the bead. At the fourth a drop of blood welled up beneath the needle. It fattened, grew dark and gleaming. It paused there. The edges of it tinted scarlet and merged with the fine sheen of his sweat. It gained languid velocity. Her eyes followed. It rolled down the swollen skin and twisted toward his spine in a slow ribbon. A corner of her mouth twitched. Her breathing changed.

"Is something wrong?"

"No. No." She felt a little dizzy. "Just a little blood, that's all."

"Oh."

Her trembling fingers abandoned the needle. She brushed the piercing with a square of gauze and the blood stained it a pretty red. She blotted the valley of his spine. "There." She wiped the skin. "All taken care of. How do you feel?"

"I feel good."

She touched her forearm to her upper lip. She sighed. "Do you need a break?"

"No."

"All right. We're halfway through."

"Good."

The skin of his upper back flushed in hot patches. The skin around the rings was tight and tinged a faint swollen purple. Rhiannon folded gauze over her fingers. She pressed, circumnavigating the fifth and sixth marks, soaking up the last traces of sweat. She tossed the gauze onto the floor and threaded her fingers through the clamp. Her thumb flexed against the metal.

"Number five," she said.

With the clamp situated she pushed the needle through. The muscle beneath twitched. His breath loosened and rasped over his teeth. He uttered a small sound. Rhiannon put her hand on him, framing the pierced skin with her splayed fingers. Her hand rose and fell with his breath. She leaned over him. Her face hovered over his hair. "All right?"

He started to nod. "Y-Yes."

"It's okay if it hurts," she whispered.

"I…I know."

"Now for the ring."

She slipped it through. He held his breath. She secured the bead and let the ring rest on his skin. She slid her fingers around the sixth mark. "Let it out, Carl."

He let out a long sigh.

"That's it." She clamped. "That's it. Take a few breaths. I need you to relax. Please relax for me. Can you do that?"

His breath rushed out and hitched on the way in. "Yes. I-I think so."

"Good. Good."

He drew in another breath. It slid out of him, long and slow, and as he last of it left his body her hand settled on his neck. She left it there. The flesh tightened, then started to relax. The bones in her hand loosened. Her fingers spread open. His breathing changed. It became shallow.

"Shhhhhh, no. I want calm from you, I want to feel it in you." Her hand turned over. Her thumb stroked the prominent vertebra at the base of his neck. "Give me calm. That's it. That's it. Yes. Yes. Give me calm. Give it to me. Give it to me."

"Um."

"Shhhhhh. Breathe."

She lifted her hand away. A fresh sheen of sweat gleamed on his skin. Tiny droplets nestled in the small of his back. She pushed the needle through and his spine flexed. He grunted. Air puffed through his teeth. She threaded the ring and he drew in a deep breath. She clamped the bead into place. His chest froze and he let the air out in a long quivering hiss.

"That's good," she said. "Breathe into it. Just breathe into it. Don't hyperventilate, though." She draped her hand across the bottom of his neck. "Go slow. Go slow or you'll make yourself dizzy."

"I am already. Dizzy."

"Do you want me to stop?"

His fingers flexed. "No."

She took off her gloves. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

She leaned over him and slipped her fingers under the waistband of his jeans. She tugged them down a couple of inches and put on a fresh pair of gloves and used a bit of gauze to mop up the sweat. The ink started to smear. She folded the gauze and blotted the surfaces of the marks, retouching them with the marker. "You're going to want to wear your pants a little lower. You know. While it's healing," she murmured. "It'll pull. And chafe." She blew on the ink. "And generally make your life a living hell."

The hairs over his tailbone stiffened.

"Last two," she murmured. "Last two."

"Please do it."

Rhiannon opened her mouth and exhaled. She closed her eyes for a brief moment and felt hot patches bloom on her cheeks. She blotted the skin one last time and clamped one side of his spine and retrieved a second clamp and clamped the other side. The skin stretched between them. It paled. She looked down on her trembling fingers. She readied the needles. She willed the unsteadiness out of her hands. She longed for the muscles to relax and little by little the tension drained out of her fingers and dripped into her clit. She felt it swell, felt it throb to the beat of her heart. Her breath grew shallow. The sound of it filled her ears. She pushed the needle through and once it cleared the skin she closed her eyes. The sound of his breath was loud in the darkness, the tightening of his throat, the trapped air rushing through his vocal cords. The high soft breathy plaintive pitch of it.

She rotated the ring through his flesh. She panted.

She lowered her head and tried to control her breath. She moved around toward the end of the table. His feet were curled, the muscles in his legs tight and trembling. She squatted and gazed down the valley between his spread heels. She looked at his feet and her fingers moved close to his skin. Her palm passed through the air hovering just above the sole. She leaned forward and held her breath. She longed to touch him with the bridge of her nose, to kiss his Achilles tendon. Her mouth drifted closer. She let a little air slip out and his foot twitched. She straightened up, startled, and released her breath. She took a step back. She tried to breathe through the adrenaline as she walked around to the other side of the table. As she picked up the last needle she felt dizzy.

"Okay," she whispered. "Last one."

"Last one."

She broke the skin and blood spilled. He whimpered.

"Blood." She wiped it up.

"B-Blood," he whispered.

Rhiannon rotated the last ring into place. She affixed the bead and took a breath and stepped back. She tossed the clamps onto the table. They landed with a loud clank. Carl jumped.

"You're done," she said.

He took a deep shaky breath. She picked up the dirty gauze off the floor, dropped the dirty needles to the sharps container, and peeled off the gloves. She stepped on a pedal and flipped open the wastebasket. She threw the gloves and the wrappers away. "Lay there as long as you want," she said. "Take all the time you need. I'll be waiting for you out front. Okay?"

"Uh huh."

Rhiannon opened the door and stepped out into the hall. She eased it shut and leaned up against it. She sighed. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes.

"So…how's Superman?"

Rhiannon flinched and her eyes flew open. She pushed Steve away hard enough to bounce him off the opposite wall. He slammed into it on his shoulder. He moved away and put his hand on it, looking at her with stunned eyes. "Goddammit, Jesus Christ, don't sneak up on me like that! My eyes were closed!" A hysterical edge crept into her rising voice. "In case you didn't notice, I couldn't fucking _see_ you! Shit! Shit! _Shit_!"

"Holy fuck, girl. Calm the hell down."

"I'm calm." She rubbed her face. "I'm calm. I need a fucking cigarette."

"Don't we all."

"Just…just back off on me, okay?" She waved her hands. "I'm all right. I'm all right." She shifted her weight from foot to foot. "I just need…I just need…I don't know. I don't know. A minute."

She turned and strode off down the hall. She grabbed her purse and moved through the waiting room and out the propped-open doorway. She slouched in the hot sun and lit a cigarette. She stepped into the shade. She took a long drag off it and let the smoke leak through her lips. She rubbed the space between her eyebrows with the side of her thumb. She blew the smoke skyward. She squinted through the big window. She took another drag and flicked the ash. She stood in the slanting shade of the building and cupped her elbows. She smoke curled around her arms. She scraped at the gravel with the toe of her shoe, took a last drag and bent her leg. She twisted around and killed the coal on the sole of her shoe and slipped the cigarette into her pocket. She kicked the wedge out of the door and went back inside. The door crept shut.

"I don't know who chocks the door open when the air conditioning is running," she said.

"I do it when the lobby feels like a morgue," said Steve.

Rhiannon looked past the waist-high partition. Steve paused in his shading and wiped away a runnel of blood.

"Hey, sorry about that," she said. "You know. That thing in the hallway."

His eyebrows twitched. "No blood no foul."

"Good." Rhiannon bit the side of her thumbnail. "Has he come out yet?"

"Ain't seen nothin."

"Okay." She spit out a bit of cuticle. "Okay. God I hope he's not in shock or anything. I'm going in."

Steve shook his head. "You do that."

Rhiannon walked back down the hallway and tapped her knuckles on the door. "Carl?" She flattened her hand on the door and brought her mouth close to the wood. "Are you all right in there?" She turned the knob. "Is everything okay?"

The knob pulled loose of her fingers. Rhiannon took a step back. The door swung inward.

"Yes. I'm fine."

"Okay good. Good. I was…you know." She backed away from him. "Getting a little worried there. Sometimes people have a little syncope. It's like this shock reaction and oops, out go the lights. It happens because the body thinks its being injured? Well, it is being injured, technically, but I guess it doesn't know the difference between a little cut and certain imminent death. So it just tunes out for a minute or so." She flapped her hands. "Happens all the time." She looked up at him and flashed a smile. "Is everything okay? How does it feel?"

His hands rested in his pockets. "Hurts."

"I have some aftercare literature for you." She pointed down the hall. "Over by…in the office. I know it's nothing you haven't read before, but…policy and all that, and besides you might learn something. They keep it pretty updated. Come on." She gestured. "Follow me. I'll get that stuff together for you. And I'll ring you up. And then you can get out of here. Okay?"  
He nodded.

She started to walk. "Do you have any questions for me?"

He followed along behind her. He stood there and watched as she dug through messy piles of papers. She extracted three separate sheets, shuffled them into a pile, and straightened out the edges. She stapled them together. "There you are, that'll do you." She used the surface of the desk to fold the stack into thirds. "Pocket-size. Hey, is there anything you want to ask me?" She handed it to him. "You want to know what I did, how I did it, any aftercare questions? Anything at all, trust me. I've had people ask me—oh my God. Suffice to say it takes a lot to embarrass me."

His voice softened. "No."

She blushed. "Okay."

She took his two hundred and fifty dollars at the cash register and printed him a receipt and handed it to him. She tucked her copy into his file folder. She tossed the folder to one side. "Thank you," she said. "You're welcome back anytime. I mean it. You want ink, and Ronnie Boy's your guy. And Steve totally doesn't suck. And…I'm here."

The corners of his mouth twitched. They settled into a small smile and he held her eyes a moment before looking away. "Thank you."

"Have a nice day, Carl."

He nodded. He stood there as if his feet were stuck to the floor, as if he wanted to say something more. He glanced at her and stuffed the receipt and the aftercare sheets in his back pocket. He left.

Rhiannon stood on her tiptoes and looked around the sign in the window as he walked across the gravel lot and climbed into his truck.

"Don't hurt yourself or anything," said Steve.

Rhiannon stuck her tongue out at him.

He sighed. "Toilet paper."

Rhiannon grinned. The grin broadened and she started to giggle and she clapped her hands over her mouth. The giggling deepened into true laughter. Her shoulders shook and she bent over, resting her elbows on the counter. She laughed until the tears streamed from her eyes. It started to taper off and she wiped her cheeks with the heels of her hands. She stood up and leaned into the wall. She looked at the ceiling. She sighed and flipped open the appointment book.

"Okay," she said. "Okay."


	2. Carl's Dream (I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Anah_ is the Nahuatl verb 'to take, to have'. It is spelled phonetically and appears here in its infinitive form though its meant to be translated as an active verb, 'take or have'. _Huitzli_ is the Nahuatl word for hummingbird; here it is intended as a reference to Huitzilopochtli, 'Hummingbird of the Left'.

No horsemeat. No. No horsemeat. No!

_(and find the room the room with the clock cutting tick tick tick tick tock)_

This room is empty. There is no horsemeat. Why is this room empty? There is no horse. He looks up, sees hanging panes of glass. He smells the white sterility, the clicking clocks and all of them telling a chorus of lies with their straight faces and

_(water—drip)_

No, I am He and I say

_(water—drip)_

I am He I no

_(feather…?)_

He squats. He feels his knees come up to his shoulders and inches forward on his hands. His hair is in his face. A long scintillating green feather on the floor. It breathes, blue and green and golden turquoise; the silky filaments stir. He thinks they are singing but he can't be sure the tiny tranquil voice is lost in a harsh descending ratchet of clicks, a falling-down of measured noise. The clocks awaken at last and before they can laugh him into breathing pieces he's snatched the feather off the floor and lunged out of the way. He lands against the wall and huddles there. The sheets of glass come down. They slide with a hiss and land in a thump. He sits on the tiles. He is mesmerized by the trembling feather in his hand. It is afraid of him. He feels the fear, the murmur in his bones, its tiny song, the trembling, the

_(water—drip)_

I am He, I come in a torrent of night wind, and I say

_(water—drip)_

I say _no water! NO WATER!_

A rumbling ceases. The overhead susurration falls silent.

No water, he murmurs. I will suffer no water. He strokes the feather. I will suffer no water. No water. He holds it to his chest. He lifts his face and sniffs the air.

_(I smell—sniff)_

Red. Drops like round rubies. Life scattered across the floor. Blood—drip? Blood—drip? Blood—drip? No. It's cold and hollow and the only thing to sound so cruel and toothsome and smothering is the water and this welter of drops isn't cruel. There is no drowning and no turning inside out, no cold hands and no iron grip. He's still big. It's soft and yielding, a sigh beneath his fingertips. He reaches out and smears it on the tile and

_(I am He night wind rain strife death I am I am He of the south He of the)_

He spreads the blood around. He draws in it the shape of a hummingbird: the pointed wings, the short flared tail, the long narrow beak. He has forgotten about horses and water and glass and clocks. He feels the softness of breath. The thrum of blood. The long feather tingles in his hand.

_(by Huitzli)_

He looks up and feels himself expand, molecules stretching out alongside the infinite. And up and up and up. His eyes fill up with cold stars in a circumscribed sky and he takes a breath that moves through him and tastes of woman black coffee yeast salt cold dark minerals impregnated with blood and fear and yearning, it burns on his tongue, the room is not the horse room here is the vaulting ceiling and the bricks all laid out of gold and sandstone and the big red throne and motionless purple walls breathing mother whispers everywhere

_(I—AM!)_

He looks down the long wide stairs. Air trembles through the walls and he is in the skin of the god and the god is of his skin, his hands, his bones, his open aura and his living sense of space. She is at the bottom. Blood spatters around her feet in a halo. She is so white, a graven image of soapstone, a monument of deathless breathtaking and sacred flesh, and he feels her air move into his lungs, low and soft and inscribed with fear and with awe. She is staring straight ahead. Her white hair is pulled tight up on her scalp, fastened into a tall narrow Mohawk of towering quetzal feathers. Plugs of jadestone stretch her earlobes and make them dangle. A pattern of sub-dermal stones adorns her shoulders and upper chest, wrought in a pattern of snakes and skulls. A gold labret hangs from her lip. Her nipple shields are in four colors, black white red blue, and hung with cascading ropes of turquoise. A loose skirt of black and red cotton encases her legs. She looks up at him with bloodstone red shading her water-colored eyes and a thin rim of black paint clinging to her lashes. She lifts an arm and holds it out toward him, the wrist languid, the fingers relaxed. Her hands are darkened and her arms stained to the elbows with the maroon color of drying blood. Her nails have been ripped out and replaced with tiny obsidian arrowheads thrust into the nail beds. Fresh blood runs down her hands, drips off her elbows, falls in drops from her fingertips. Her pale lips part and he sees her teeth: the front two capped in bloodstones, the rest alternating onyx and jade.

He takes a step down. The walls shiver and pull. The word is a sigh; it leaks out of the stones and simmers up through the boards on the floor.

_Huitzli._

He looks down, sees her ankles weighted with shackles.

_(if it it's okay if)_

He feels the impact of her eyes land in his chest and looks up as the stem of the feather hums in his fingers and she lets her breath go soft and loose, her left hand curling into her chest. A blood-flower blooms there. A thick spill flows across her white belly and goes drip drip drip, soaks into her skirt, plops onto the tops of her feet full of soft sneaking heat and drowsy scent. It shimmers over his skin and slides down, between the hairs, crawls into all the dark places and makes a nest of his desire. Those tiny little blades dig into her flesh. They slice through skin and she lets out a rich low moan and whimpers, holding his eyes with her own as she offers gloaming-eyelids soft and scarlet and sinking, trammeled in the surrender to the night.

_(it's okay if)_

Her wrist turns and yanks. Her heart births through the gash in her chest, slick and red and furious with life. Her fingers are tight around it, they strangle

_(it hurts)_

The trailing vessels, and her blood is a hot splash against his toes and she is holding her heart out, straining her shackles. It pulses in her hand. He steps down. The walls tremble and quiver and strain and he steps down again and the cloth releases, unwinding through the walls with a deep rustling sigh

_(…anah)_

He draws close to her and takes a deep breath of her skin and closes his eyes for a moment. He sees the hummingbird on her forehead, the wings splayed across her pale eyebrows and the beak drawn to the tip of her nose, the tiny body rendered down to individual varicolored feathers

_(Carl)_

His lips part. He pants a little and she touches him with the febrile flesh the wild crazy throbbing slickness of it

_(ah!)_

His spine arches and a mouthful of pillowcase rushes into his sense and kicks, the pain striking deep sparks in his back. They sink in and flare like coals. He bites down on the pillow and roared, hips twitching into the mattress. He humps. His groin slides in a hot sticky pool and throbs with agonized pleasure. He makes fists and pounds the mattress. He does it again and utters a breath-torn breaking whimper before hauling the pillow over his head, smothering his face. He bites his lip against the pain.


	3. Taken

She had time to toss her purse onto the passenger seat. That was before she smelled man-skin and the tingle in her spine registered that something was off, something slight; there wasn't enough air and the nighttime felt displaced, cool air and fragrance of oleander and the ghosts of oil-stains on baked pavement. She heard the crunch of gravel under cat-quiet and thick-soled shoes and had time for _whuh_. Not even _what_; her purse hit the passenger seat and body heat wafted across her bare back in the instant before an arm hooked around her throat, a reality shift so swift and sudden that she had no time to register it. Her breath exploded. She banged herself in the face with her keys as her hands flew up and struggled to get a grip on the wrist. Her back arched in a hard shove. She slammed backward into a body much larger than her own. Her feet scuffled. The body behind her lurched and stumbled around in a staggering circle, bleeding her actions dry of momentum. A hand covered her mouth. Each syllable broke down, went softer than the one before it; in the spaces lurked sweet panting hesitation:

"Rhiannon."

A burst of adrenaline drenched her mind. It was white-hot; it filled her eyes and unraveled her breath.

"D-Don't." The whisper flooded her ear. "Shhhh."

Her knees quivered and her belly heaved into the waistband of her jeans. She whimpered.

"No." His fingers tightened on her face. "No noise. Shhhh."

She lunged and tried to twist away but he held fast to her collarbones. She dug her nails into his arm. He drew in a sharp breath; she lifted up her knee and brought her heel down on his instep. He grunted and swung her around and she shrieked against his palm, a muffled inarticulate sound of rage. He shoved her into the brick wall. Her breath rushed out of her lungs. He grappled with her and yanked her arms, pinning her wrists to the small of her back. Her forehead stuck the wall. He let go of her mouth. Her cheekbone scraped up against the clay. He grazed the back of her head with trembling fingertips. Her spine jerked. His thumb slipped into the valley between her tendons. Her breathing roughened. Her skin crawled with a million tiny sparks.

"I want," he whispered. "Calm…from you."

"Carl." The tingling stormed her throat. "Let go of me."

"Shhhh." He brushed his nose against her fuzz of hair. His hand skimmed and settled, light as a kiss, across her throat. "Calm."

Her mouth opened and her collarbones lifted up and down. Her breath came in frantic gasps. Her eyes stung. He tightened his fingers and held her throat, stroking her pulse with his thumb. The tears welled up and spilled over. She sniffled and her chest hitched. She tried to breathe as the tears cut hot streaks down her skin. They dripped off her chin, landing on the back of his wrist. He stroked the well between her collarbones and her body squirmed. He moved his hand over her chest. Her breath deepened, smoothed out into long agonized strokes. His hand settled over her heart. It knocked against his palm.

"C-Carl." Her chin quivered. "Please."

His breath broke. He moved his cheek against her scalp.

Rhiannon twisted her numb wrists. He tightened his grip and her arms pulled, her body shuddering. She put her forehead on the wall and started to sob. He passed a shaking hand over her mouth. She twisted her head twisted away and he took hold of her jaw, hauling her head into his chest. Her neck arched up. He let go of her wrists and she flattened her hands against the wall, pushing back into him, trying to knock him off-balance. He caught hold of her shoulders and tried to wrestle her around. She grabbed the edge of the wall. He bared his teeth and pulled until her grip broke and he turned her around and slammed her into the wall. She panted through clenched teeth. He leaned a knee between her thighs and held her forearms against the building. She squirmed around and worked a knee up and planted a foot on his thigh. She tried to leverage herself upward and he flattened her with his body. Her face mashed into his shoulder. She sobbed, inhaling a mouthful of cotton, her bones loose and her muscles prickling along the inside of her skin. He snatched up her face. She clasped his wrists. He shook her head. He looked down at her and his eyebrows softened, knit together with brief agony. Snot gleamed on her upper lip. He pulled down her jaw and opened his mouth and bit down over hers. Her hands clawed toward his head. He filled her mouth with his tongue, his teeth bruising her lips. She took handfuls of his hair and made fists and uttered a soft strangled noise. Tears coursed down her cheeks. He dug his fingers into her jaw, licking her palate until she couldn't breathe. Her hands went limp. Her joints unlocked like ice melting, one drip at a time, until her arms slithered to her sides. His hands scooped up her pliancy and brought it close, jammed it up against him. She breathed hard, her tongue touching the inside of his mouth. He groaned. She put her arms around his neck and left them there, loose and draped, and kissed him back. She pushed into him. He pushed back. She landed up against the wall with a grunt. Her shaking hands unfastened her jeans and shoved them down over her hips. He took hold of her wrists.

"No," he said. "Not this way."

"I d-don't…w-what do you…?" The tears welled and she bit her lip.

"Shhhh…no tears." He wiped one side of her face with his knuckles. He used his thumb to wipe the other. "No. Shhhh."

Her breath hitched. He put a hand on her throat. Her hand settled over his hand and he brought his face in close to hers. She opened her mouth. His nose touched her nose. He leaned his forehead against hers. She lifted her chin. His fingers tightened.

"W-What do you want from me?"

"I…want you to pass out," he whispered.

She froze. "What?"

"Please." She heard the rustle of plastic. "I-I…need you to."

Her eyes widened. "I don't understand."

He looked into her eyes. She looked up at him. A sharp chemical odor wafted to her nose. Her breathing grew shallow.

"Say yes?" He kissed her cheek.

Her eyes closed. "Please don't hurt me."

His mouth brushed hers. Her tongue nudged his teeth. "You don't have to hurt me," she whispered.

He looked into her. "Say yes."

Her chest heaved. "Okay."

His breath rushed out of him. He closed his eyes and kissed her forehead and pressed the rag over her mouth. The fumes gagged him and made him dizzy. He turned his face away. Her chest locked as she struggled to breathe. Her fingers twitched. The awareness sagged out of her and he caught her before she folded to the ground. He tossed the rag aside and gathered her up. She reclined in his arms, all long arms akimbo and lazy torso and long legs and pale arching throat. Her feet swayed, toes pointing down. He put her in the passenger seat of his truck and pulled up her jeans and fastened and zipped them. He buckled her in. He shut the door and walked around to the driver's side and climbed in. Her head lolled and she slumped to one side. He lifted her with both hands, easing her face up against the window. Her hands lay in her lap like broken birds. He picked one of them up and turned it over, the bones lax in his fingers. He touched the hummingbird inked into her skin.


	4. Clean

The heat slid along her skin, something like silk but softer, more intuitive, something that stole the rhythm of her breath and wore it like glimmering pearls. The heat came first. Then the slide, softening her bones like melting wax. Light pricked her eyelashes. It wormed into the darkness and ate at the lining of her stomach.

Hollow. Not hollow but like hollow. Clank. Clank. Muffled but not muffled. That other noise, low and sloshing.

She wanted to open her eyes. She smelled something clean, light and floral. She tried to open them but her eyelids felt like lead.

Her stomach contracted. Panic hit. A hand slipped under the back of her head and lifted it up. _I'm going to puke_. She swallowed and swallowed and felt something tighten around her throat, some smooth cold heavy thing. She wanted to touch it. Her arms stirred but her muscles were weighted down. Chains clanked. _Oh shit. Shit._ The bile rose. She clenched her teeth. Cold sweat popped out on her forehead and she started to shake. Her body convulsed and her feet splashed and the hand steadied her head as the vomit rushed up through her throat, flowed out of her mouth, and splattered into a big silver bowl. Her eyes unsealed. The stink filled her nostrils and she gagged. She reached for the edges of the tub and the shackles were heavy. A warm washcloth wiped her lips.

She startled and twisted her face away. The fingers tightened on her scalp. She opened her eyes and looked up and sucked in big ragged breaths. The washcloth dunked into the water. He swirled it around and squeezed out. He sponged the clammy sweat off her skin. She lifted her wrist out of the water and touched his forearm.

"Where am I?"

Carl put the bowl on the floor. "The bathtub."

"I'm g-going to…"

Her face clenched. He dropped the washcloth in the water and held the bowl up to her chin. She tried to sit and held onto the edges of the tub and retched up long strings of bile. He wiped her mouth. She turned her head away, reaching for the cloth. He put the bowl down and pulled the cloth out of her reach. Her fingers swiped at it. He put a hand on the side of her face and hooked his thumb under her jaw. She tried to move again and he steadied her head. Her body tensed up. She let her hands fall back into the water. She took several deep breaths through her nose and started to relax. She unwound in twitches. Her eyes fluttered shut. Her neck went soft against the porcelain.

"I can…do it."

"No."

Her head rolled to one side on the rim. He washed her chin. He dunked the cloth into the water and squeezed it out over her forehead, the drops landing on her forehead and flowing warm and sweet down over her cheeks. It dribbled over her mouth. He folded the cloth over his fingers and stroked her forehead, her eyebrows, the lobes of her ears. He cradled the back of her neck.

"Slide down," he said.

Rhiannon sighed and bent her knees. Her back glided across the bottom and the water slid up over her ears and blocked out all sounds but for the tidal flow of her breathing. He scooped water over her forehead and massaged it into her scalp. She filled with languor. He lifted her head up out of the water and her neck sagged. He washed her neck, the insides of her elbows, the curves of her breasts. Her eyes closed and she floated down with the slow beat of her blood. He soaped up her flanks and rinsed them. His hand moved along the inside of her thigh, pulling it toward the edge of the tub. Her muscles let go. He scrubbed the skin down to her groin and her toes curled. The heat and the lingering effects of the chloroform drifted through her head, spinning it around. He steadied her knee. Her blood thickened. He moved the lips of her cunt apart and washed them with light, slow, careful strokes. Her breath grew sharp. He maneuvered her thigh toward her chest and stroked between her buttocks. Her lips parted and she let out a slide of air that was almost a sound. Her feet clenched.

He unfastened the chain from her collar. He plunged his arms into the water and lifted her out. Her cheek lolled into his shoulder. Water ran off her legs and splashed into the tub.

"I can walk, you know."

He put her down. There was a folded quilt on the floor and it was covered with fluffy white cotton towels. He picked up each limb, drying her with delicate precision. He unfastened the chains from her wrists.

"I'm hungry."

He carried her into the basement. Her eyes were closed and she didn't open them until he stopped walking. She found herself in a small room with pale turquoise walls and a large bed decked out with sumptuous linens. There were clothes, a skirt and some kind of tunic top in cream-colored silk. There were beads or designs painted on them in pale colors, grays and darker creams and silvers, but the grogginess was coming up on her again like a wave. He felt her connection to wakefulness loosen and start to unravel. He put her down on the bed and pulled the tunic shirt over her head like she was a baby or a patient and Rhiannon slumped against him, muttering. He maneuvered her arms through the sleeves. There were new chains slumped on the bed and he locked them onto her wrists.

"Wanna damn cheeseburger, can you get me a cheeseburger, Carl? I so fucking starrr-ving. I'm starrr-ving."

"No," he said. "There's still too much…chloroform in your system, you'd just throw it back up."

"But I want it."

"Later."

Rhiannon lay on her back with her wrists flopped up over her head. Carl moved the skirt up over her lax hips.

"Are you gonna leave me here?"

He straightened out the waistband and pulled the tunic down. "I have to go to work."

"I'm so sleepy."

He fastened a narrower chain to her collar. "I know."

"Don't leave me here."

He touched her forehead. "I have to."

"God dammit don't you do that shit and then leave me alone here. Don't you even do that. I fuckin hate that. I hate it."

"Rhiannon…I…"

She blinked her unfocused eyes. "You used too much stuff, I think."

"I-I'm sorry."

She moved one arm. The chains clinked. "Wait. Until I'm asleep?"

He looked down. She touched his hand.

"I don't…don't want…solitude to be the l-last thing I…remember," she whispered.

He picked up her hand. He watched her face relax, then twitch back to wakefulness. "Shhhh," he said.

She fought it but she was no match for her doctored bloodstream. She started to snore. He replaced her hand on the bed and pulled the silk blankets out from beneath her sprawled feet and covered her to the waist. He went out into the rest of the basement. He closed the door and locked it and leaned against it for a moment, just breathing. He listened to his breath. He felt the cadence of it, the way it spread throughout his body and carried calm.

He went upstairs and took his car keys from the nail over the counter and left.


	5. Rhiannon's Dream

Even the ceiling was blue. She stared up at it, the ceiling the same color as the walls, the same color as the painted floor: all turquoise, all the time, it was soothing, it was isolating, it was like the sky was a box and she was a bird locked inside it.

There was no noise. She laid on the bed and took especial care not to rattle the chains and held her breath, but all she heard was her heart thudding in her ears. Once she thought she heard traffic noise, but it was exotic and ephemeral and her mind could not connect it to the swath of surrounding blue. Silence drifted up to the ceiling and spread apart and drifted down, smothering even the soft in-out whistle of her breath. The silk on her body whispered. The silk on the bed whispered. The bristles of her hair whispered. She thought the chains would whisper if they could. Rhiannon imagined silk-padded chains, links wrapped in velvet. She wondered if such a thing existed.

_It could. It could in here._

She crept into sleep and dreamed about the room and in her dream the chains were dressed in pewter velvet. The walls held the scent of jasmine and her skin murmured at the touch of her fingers, sighed out words she couldn't understand. She tried to make it talk and there was the breath and the softness and the weight in her bones, weight lent to them by her chains, and she was comforted. She didn't know when she was awake and she was sleeping, though in her dreams blue butterflies flew out of the chains and whirled in a cloud around the light fixture and melded into the ceiling and left behind the dry rustle of their wings. In her dreams the silk was her skin. She touched the hems of her skirt and felt it tickle in her loins. A tracing of the embroidery made goosebumps in her mind. A brisk snap of fabric between her fists ignited a strange humming vibration deep in her womb. Wings unfolded from the surface of her tongue and twitched and fluttered along the insides of her cheeks. She opened her mouth. Butterflies flew out, pink and veined as she was along the inside of her white skin.

Sometimes she dreamed that she was dreaming that she was awake. She peeled back one silken layer, then another that was tender and sweet, like the pulp of an overripe fruit. The inside layer, the waking layer, was transparent and full of screaming nerve endings. They wailed and moaned, keened and scratched. With patience the noise would recede. Her breath would swallow it. She was made of patience, crafted out of its strong beams and set afloat on a shadowy sea of tranquility. Her breath knew the way to the secret places and it stopped the hidden machineries. The pink butterflies swarmed it. They muffled it with their wings, dismantled it one molecule at a time with their twitchy legs.

The machinery fell away and there was complete darkness and out of this blindfold came a great smooth heavy skin-temperature silence and he was in it.

The silk went first. It billowed ahead of her carried on the will of her breath and it brushed against his skin. She felt electric. Her hands trembled and remained still. The silk reached out through the space and came in contact with his skin, all of it, the vast warm topography of it, each hair and folded place and its moisture, its warm scent. It moved around him like a blanket. It enveloped him. The air gained an imprint of heat, the map of his bones, each vein a hot singing pulsing river, a longing taste sinking deep roots in the back of her tongue. His skin brushed her skin. She knew crippling thirst and hunger that threatened to flense her bones, to tear her skin inside out and vomit her soul into the bowl of his hands.

The velvet links shifted. She pulled on them, felt him cry out. She pulled again. The chains murmured and his breath was a blade on her neck, a thin hot edge that aligned itself with her pulse, tracing it with a soft fluttering tongue

_(to…want to)_

Rhiannon looped the chain around her hands, made fists, breathed soft into his skin and reached into the darkness, drew it up close around her shoulders and

_(pull)_

The pain and the resistance, his flayed voice, raw and delirious

_(Carl I want I'm hungry so)_

So much lung-conditioned dark humid living and her eyes are in her fingers

_(wet inside)_

She glimpsed it spelled out across the insides of her hands: steel cord laced into his back and chained to her chains. She clenched her teeth and pulled. He screamed. The screams fell onto her skin and wormed their way inside, played with her nerve endings, stroked them into gentle feeling. She dropped the chains and he made a hissing pained noise and it moved through the folds of her skirt and touched her clit and her breath sucking inward sawing open her throat and the blood on his tongue, in his hands, flowing through his fingers she is a long hot sticky moan and falling falling falling awake. The vertigo snapped. She moved and heard the chains clink, too heavy and too loud in the darkness of her closed eyes. She pulled on them and they dug bruises into her wrists. Her groin beat a slow somnolent throb.

The tears rose but she was too tired to care.


	6. Release

When he came to the door that night he heard the chains rattling inside and stood outside and listened for a moment. The clanging, the heavy hollow scrape of the chains moving on the floor. He held a plate with a piece of steak cooked so it was like a rose in the center and it bled all over the white porcelain. There was a field green salad and the leaves glistened in a separate bowl. A blood orange hung in his pocket. He held his breath and the chains stopped dragging. The clinking ceased. He heard the bed shift. He wondered if she could smell the balsamic vinegar.

He walked into the little blue room. Rhiannon sat near the head of the bed with one leg curled around her ankle and her knee folded up beside her chin. A blanket swaddled her to the waist. Her white skin, the pale silver blanket, the creamy shade of her clothing, the comforter diluted champagne; his brain unfocused into lines and folds and angles and curves. The ink on her skin screamed into the white noise, floated on a sea of textures: the cashmere blanket, the raw silk of the comforter and the smooth silk of her clothes. A shadow of snow and light reflected through a welter of clouds. She leaned forward, her long arms draped across the blanket. All of those ivory lines in motion. Her face tilted, the light sliding along her cheekbones. She lowered her goosedown eyelashes and looked at him sidelong.

"I know you must be hungry," he said.

Her legs unfolded. She crawled forward and her shoulder blades thrust up like a cat's, her body unwinding in a sinuous avalanche of slow motion. She stretched out onto her belly. The chains dragged across the top of the bed. Her feet lifted and crossed at the ankles and she looked up at him, settling her chin in her hands.

"Do you want to eat?"

"Yes."

Her eyes were crystalline; when she looked at him they were clear and sharp and they cut.

He squatted down at the foot of the bed and slid the plate onto the blanket. "Here."

Her eyes widened at the steak. Her nostrils twitched. He put the salad bowl beside the plate and she plucked a clump of leaves with her fingers and tucked them into her mouth. Her jaw worked and she studied the steak. It had been cut into neat squares and stood in a puddle of rich browned blood. She swallowed.

"Fuck," she whispered. "Fuck me God that looks…so…good."

"It's bigger than I thought…you'd want."

"No. No. It's perfect. Perfect. I'm so hungry. I'm starving."

She stuffed a chunk of meat into her mouth. Her eyes rolled back a little and she moaned and chewed and ate another piece, stirring the salad with her fingers, sucking the vinaigrette and bits of Parmesan off her fingernails. She picked up the bowl and ate the salad in three monster mouthfuls and ripped into the steak, pulling the bits of meat apart and licking the blood off the insides of her fingers. She swooned into the task of chewing. She hunched over the plate and wolfed down half the meat. She wiped her mouth on the back of her wrist and gnawed up what was left and tilted the plate over her lips. She slurped the blood.

"There's more upstairs…do you want more?"

"Yes!"

He took the plates upstairs into his small kitchen and dumped them in the sink. He grabbed a baked potato and the bit of steak he couldn't finish and sliced it up. He opened the potato and churned up the insides and sliced some butter. He added a spoonful of sour cream and stirred it in and salted it a little and stuck the spoon into the potato's starchy guts. He flicked the butter on top and grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and balanced the plate on his arm. He carried it all downstairs.

"Oh God, potato…I smell potato!"

He came in and she was waiting at the edge of the bed, sitting up, the chain on her neck stretched to its limit. She reached out for the plate. He sat down on the bed beside her, perched on the corner of the mattress. She moved back a little and sat on one leg and took the plate from him. She got down to work. She ate the few bites of steak and stirred up the potato. She ate some of it with her fingers and some of it with the spoon, peeling away thick chunks of crunchy skin, folding it up and smearing it through the melted butter. She closed her eyes with each bite. Her jawbone moved beneath her skin and her throat flexed and pleasure climbed out of her taste buds, traveling across her face. Carl sat with his hands loose in his lap and watched her.

"Mmmm this is so good," she murmured. "This is so good."

He took the orange out of his pocket. "Here."

Rhiannon stopped mangling the potato and looked at it. She looked at him and took it out of his hand.

"It's a blood orange."

She tossed the plate to one side. She dug her nails into the rose-tinted skin and the tendons stood out on the backs of her bony hands. Her nails breached the rind and released a fine mist of pungent oil. She slid her fingers underneath and loosened it, the juice staining her nails a livid scarlet. She peeled the rind away in chunks. She dropped the chunks onto the plate. Thick red juice clung to her fingers and the flesh was so dark it was almost purple. She took a bite. She sucked her knuckles. She held his eyes with her own and her hand crept to his shirt, the dazed fingers winding it up in a tight fist and she bared her teeth and hauled his face up into hers. The sudden motion in his spine and the noise of the chain startled him, and he forced a hard breath into her proximity, and then she kissed him and it was all agitated slippery silken skin and strong jaws and her tongue massaging a frisson, orange and beef-blood mixed up with something sharp and musky and strange. She took a bite out of the orange and let the flesh fall into his mouth. He sucked it off her tongue and bit down on the warm juicy pulp and the bright sweetness exploded on the back of his throat, went off like a flare in the dark recesses of his brain, the sweet and the sour mingling with the soft simmer of her mouth and the decadence of her tongue. He swallowed and drooled and she moaned, drinking up the flood, bathing in a wash of saliva and desire. He gripped the back of her skull. He inhaled her oxygen and licked the lining of her mouth and sank into the pliant texture of her flesh, the way it molded to the insistence of his lips, the smooth raw redness of her abraded skin. He made some sound, a vocalization he didn't perceive until he felt it galvanize her muscles. She bit his chin. Her mouth was on his neck and the intensity of it squirmed hot through his bones. He gasped and she brought the half-skinned orange to his lips, her fingers clenching, and the juice spilled through them and oozed shreds of pulp. Most of the juice ran down his neck. He licked his lips and she touched the top one with the stringy flesh. His breath stuttered and his thighs flexed and he moaned. He wrestled the orange away from her and flung it against the wall.

Her clothes were smooth and her skin was smooth, and in her satin existence she slid against the bedclothes like a vessel upon the water, sinking down, chains softened and whispering on the thickness of the bedclothes. Her skin was a beacon, a sea of warmth and scent and his skin followed hers, drawn by momentum into the wake of her flesh. He slid the silk up over her skin, pale giving way to pearl, the poignant declivity of her ribs and the sloping ivory bowl of her stomach, living and rising up on a tide of sweet yearning breath. He smelled her. Her underlying structure quivered toward him, the tender heat of her skin rich with invisible blood, fraught with tremulous entrainment and the hesitation of his breath. Her hipbones were blunt blades slipping up through fields of warm snow. He braced them with his thumbs, let his nostrils come to rest in her navel. The dark scent of her secrets touched his mind. He rested his cheek there, the crest of her pubic bone insistent along the side of his chin, the restlessness of her long legs a seismic event. He pulled away from his surroundings. The blue walls and the heavy bedclothes and the chains receded into a shadowy underworld and there was only the faint bruised-flower scent of her skin, the buried salt, her cradle of soft muscle, and the anchor of her hips.

He unveiled her. The skirt came up into his fists and her legs parted like curtains doors dancers cells dividing, lips frosted with luminescent hair and again in raw gleaming pink, and beyond that the pungent fitful darkness, a midnight eye bereft of stars, a long unbroken corridor of seconds and doors, white smooth skin white hairs skinned raw flesh bleeding open copious amounts of glistening slime. The smell embedded tiny hooks into his brain and pulled until his teeth clenched and his breathing went shallow and the muscles between his ribs clamped into tight knots. His legs loosened into a swooning sensation that moved upward in slow increments and at the brush of wiry briny hair on his bottom lip it collided with the building tension below his sternum and made a storm front in his belly. He tasted metal. He warmed her in his breath and the smooth wet surfaces of his mouth opened into the blowsy embrace of her cunt. He swallowed her. The muscles anchored in her groin twitched. He scooped up her buttocks and squeezed them and drew her floppy hood into his mouth. He sucked and her breath vibrated through her sprawled lips. Her voice throbbed in her clit.

He licked. He sensed her hesitation, felt the strain and the quiescence within her. He strengthened his tongue. Her legs trembled and her cunt wept and wept and wept, he longed to soothe her facilitate her make her boil make her safe, haul her in and lift her out of troubled waters and set her adrift in the harbor of his intent, make her into a storm, take in her rain and give nourishment to her burgeoning momentous screaming pleasure, the domination of her hesitation, the divorce of her mind and her body and the sacrifice of both upon the dirty altar of her soul. Her heart beckoned in her clit. It thrust against his tongue and demanded acknowledgment, strangled his breath in its siren song, longed for something to fill up its empty places and placate the endless fulminating seething darkness. That raw place. He pushed his fingers inside and the muscles tightened and the clamor of her heart pounded through her hidden walls. It made a rope of his tendons and shinnied down them and traversed the links of his bones. It climbed into his own heart, kicked down the trapdoor and invaded his soul. It crackled up through every nerve back to his brain and roared in his cock.

He listened to her shattered breath, put a hand on her ribs felt the way they threatened to shimmy apart _stay with me, stay and go where you need to_—a broken moment hovering and the sudden surrender in her cunt before her legs wound tight and her ribs split and her voice roared up _squeeze squeeze breathless deathless clinging brute flesh_—the thunder under her skin, the broken composure, the grasping immolation and the gasping twitching yield to an absolute dominion of pleasure.

A flood, a river, a great hungry ruby-throated serpent swallowing swallowing down down and the screaming amnesia fingers across her face, tenuous grip and oh the rampage of his bones and the fevered embrace of her thighs, choke that toothless mouth until it killed him. She was drenched in sweat. He came back to the harsh labor of his lungs, the misfiring neurons, the ripe soft clenching aftershocks and the thin whistle of his stunned vocal cords. She breathed with him, struggled up out of her own limp place. She breathed through pale lips. He slid out of her, an evisceration of heat and cool air.

He moved back onto his knees. His loosened pants fell and he pulled them up. He zipped and buckled. She was splayed apart, broken and breathing, creamy and wet and peaceful and somnolent.

"Nice," she breathed.

He backed off the bed. Her eyes opened and she turned her face and looked at him. He picked up the plate. He picked up the orange, mangled and mutilated thing that it was. He could smell it. He smelled citrus and sweat and cunt and mud and silk and the basement beyond the four painted blue walls. He looked into her eyes and in their silence they beckoned but his mind dug in its heels and his body balked, his tired euphoric soup of cells, and before she had a chance to open her mouth and shape words with her voice and set them loose in the small space he took his mess and left. He sat down on the other side of the door. He put the plate aside and shook all over and every quiet clink of chain was a needle digging into his softest parts until the pain was too much and he wanted to scream but couldn't. He had no voice left. He'd sprayed his voice into her bottomless guts. Outside the door he couldn't smell anything but dirty basement but if he waited her skin would seep through the boards and whisper to his nostrils and he'd have to go back, it would be like gravity, what goes up cannot stay up and the fall is dangerous and bruising and sweet. He trembled in his hands. The blood orange clung in stains to his fingers. He licked them.


	7. Propitiation

We mustn't count. A number infers another number. Numbers are self-propagating. It is a linear birth. Number one is the foundation for number two. Two multiplies with itself to make four. One two three four. Four into sixteen. Sixteen into thirty-two, one for each year. And so we mustn't count. We mustn't.

It is like an art exhibit: Nameless Female Number One.

_(how do)_

She is heavier now that she is dead. She was lighter and full of restlessness and she is flesh full of lead. Minus the constant effervescent life to aerate, to lift. Heavy dead ugly doll in this tub full of scarlet water. She is wet. She is revolting. She fills the tub. He cannot remember unzipping his pants but he can remember killing

_(…I)_

The strange feeling upon sight of her, reverse vertigo, bubbles floating downward and the sinking in his head. His eyes full of stones. The voice of the god came out of the scratching, all those stones rubbing together, calm soothing hateful whispering and the itch in his hands. Like poison ivy on the inside. Red raw itching blisters, the suppurating end of her life: nameless vessel and shell of flesh, dead meat, living deliverance, a place to vomit up the bitterness the confusion the memory loss the crippling rage and silence the voice. The stones gone still. The humming silent in his ears. The blisters itched inside his palms and he took her out of an alley and broke her skin and ate her screams and daydreamed of water. Waves, ripples, raindrops and mist, smooth smothering broken sunbeams. Glittering spears of light. He longed for water but there was no water. The capillaries broke up in her eyes. He wanted the release of it, the sanctity, the horror. The stillness of her limbs. Her spirit flying home. He thought to drown her but there was no water. So he choked her instead.

_(numbers no)_

Her breasts are big and too brown and her hair is the color of mud and her eyes are the color of shit think think of white pure smooth ivory unbuckle unzip her face the taste of lost in the vagina mine think of this think of her and not the rage has made this nameless female ugly female rotten bitch whore useless and her blood is gone into the water her skin is abandoned her disgusting flesh is nothing without

_(art)_

This mess. This is such a mess. I am such a mess.

The chains clink. "Carl?"

His breath snags. His fingers are wrinkling inside the rubber gloves. He works to clean up the chunks of flayed skin.

The chains are muffled by the wall. Her voice is soft. It makes him feel soft. "Are you out there?"

The flesh lands in a bowl. It lands with a thick wet slap. It's better because the bowl is rocking and inside the rocking are the memories and each new piece is like a breath, a freshening, and as he listens to Rhiannon's chains and the way she moves behind the walls he pulls the drain on the blood and remembers the sweet destruction of fucking her.


	8. Call

The phone rang. And rang. The inside of the apartment was still and full of dust. Most of the shades were drawn and the kitchen was dark. A cat sat outside a cracked-open window. It was longhaired and gray and it pushed its squashed-in face under the gap and uttered a croaky meow. It stuck a matted paw inside, pushing a loose piece of paper off the coffee table and onto the floor. Beside its curled-up tail was a turned-over empty bowl. The cat crouched down and tried to worm through the gap. It yowled.

BEEP.

"Hey, Rhi, it's Steve again. Man oh man, where the fuck are you? Ronnie's starting to get itchy and the brass is coming down on him about all the missed appointments. Ronnie said he came by your place this afternoon and knocked a few times and he's threatened to call the police if you don't call someone by eight. He said you locked Mirage outside. What the hell's up with that? I know you love that cat. I guess he's all dirtied up with dried leaves and shit. Ronnie fed him some tuna and he went just about crazy. Well he said he's gonna come by tonight and pick him up and take him home if you haven't called. So I'm gonna leave another message on your cell. You had better not be lying in a ditch somewhere. Come on, girl. Gimme a call, okay? I'm starting to worry."


	9. Alone

_So much alone time it isn't good_

Rhiannon is in her blue box a blue box in a basement the white pearl in the middle of nowhere screaming sky blue is the color of nowhere the ceiling of the desert and she is not sleeping the blue is not weeping and she cannot sleep though she wants to because dreams would be better than this

_So much so_

Rhiannon grew up in Nevada. She grew up in snow and the thick pine trees blocked the sun and she won't tell people this. It doesn't matter. She is a marble statue and a goddess of ink spun of spider webs and a ghost and the wielder of the wicked needles. She has no past. The people want no past. They want her needles and the magic of the needles the holes in their bodies her body tied down to chemicals and sex and the myth that comes with it

_For a young girl_

Rhiannon doesn't want to know the cabin and its roughhewn walls but she does know it and the concussion of fists on her flesh, fists that want her flesh more than the flesh of the others, though it could be worse it could be the other flesh the secret flesh and she hears Daddy moaning at night and Molly crying but Molly will shoot herself on her sixteenth birthday and Rhiannon will only remember the coffin in a huge room like an ocean liner and finger sandwiches and coffee and uncles and aunts and flower petals and long ticking silences. She will never see the cabin again. She sees it right now. It lives in her mind. The blue room is forcing it out of her. The blue room is dredging up the chinked walls and the exposed beams in the roof and the windows that made neat little frames of nature, and she can smell it, cedar pine and moth's wings, moths dive-bombing the caged light. She can't hear that song now without tasting blood without bruises roaring in her hips or the sound of Molly whimpering in the deep dark night and Daddy moaning long before Mommy found out and sweated over the carrots and flung the onions and gave Molly the shotgun

_Pat Benatar it was_

Rhiannon is four years old. Molly is fifteen years old. She is coltish and beautiful and her shining brown hair is like wings and there are cinnamon freckles on her nose and secrets and Daddy hits Rhiannon so hard she can't breathe but she still loves him and he doesn't hit Molly but he fucks her instead and Molly hates him and loves him with her pretty plastic smile and the teeth she wishes she had and Mommy likes to hunt. Molly likes to kill things. Mommy kicks Daddy to the curb. The brains won't come out of the walls.

_…hit me with your best shot hit me hit fire away and so much alone time isn't good Mrs. Heath isn't good for a young girl_

It's safe in the blue box with the white silk and water runs somewhere and she thinks of footfalls but she can't come out of her mind and the smell of cedar and the sound of moths frying in the acetylene blue the choking the sparks the smoke

_I wanna hum I wanna fly away too_

Rhiannon thinks of the hummingbirds. She thinks of the feeder and the hot days she wasn't used to yet in the desert and their little red throats that made her think of Molly's brains but in a good way, like the little red spots were empty spaces on the inside and the wings would propel her smarts up to heaven, one IQ point at a time, the hummingbirds beautiful at the feeder outside her bedroom window the feeder hung up by her mother and filled with sugar water and Rhiannon wished she could be small enough to be in the red spots with her sister's brains, curled up tight with the good memories she doesn't remember, Rhiannon on her bed with the sister she can barely remember all tied up with Pat Benatar and the moaning in the dark and the imperative of her father's fists and the shotgun, the shotgun Daddy would use to shoot the hummingbirds away from the windows except he never had, it was in her imagination, the shotgun was for deer and bears and Molly got confused

_Hum hum fly fly heaven heaven_

She wants a piece of paper. She wants to write it down:

_I have no womb._

My sister has no brains.

My hummingbirds have no throats.

Rhiannon cries. First there is weeping and the weeping burns too much and so her chest loosens up and the sobbing tears up out of those old bruised places the hollow place the negative space where she cannot make her own monthly blood and fill it up with semen because it's better than nothing the memory of the shotgun strangles her and how it must've sounded going off and clear as day she remembers the time she put sugar water on the walls of the cabin for the hummingbirds, wishing they would come and drink the stains into their pretty red throats and carry Molly's brains away so her Mommy could stop sneezing over the onions and thinking about them.

Rhiannon cries and there is a pipe full of rushing water and the world is coming apart but it's okay. The chains are holding her down.


	10. Upstairs

She presumed it was nighttime though she couldn't see the sky. She stretched out on her back.

"Is it hot outside?"

"Yes."

"Has the sun gone down yet?"

"No."

Rhiannon looked at the ceiling. "Tell me about it?"

"About what?"

"Today. Tell me about today. What was it like?"

Carl was on his stomach. His chin rested on his folded arms. "It was today." He shrugged. "Today was a day like any other day. I don't know what you're asking me."

Rhiannon sighed. "It was hot."

"Yeah. It was hot."

"And sunny?"

"Yes. Sunny."

"What did you do today?"

"I went to work." He paused. "I went to your house and let your cat in. I…uh, cleaned out the litter box and…and I closed the window and turned the A/C up to sixty-five." He put his cheek on his arms. "I gave him some water."

"Oh."

He shifted. "Are you tired?"

"Not really."

"He's fine. The…cat."

"Good. That's good. Really."

He turned onto his side and picked up her wrist. He spun the shackle around. Rhiannon watched him take a key out of his pocket. He slotted the key into the metal and unlocked it. The shackle loosened and he eased it over her hand. She blinked. She watched it slide off her fingers in a daze. He let it fall onto the bed and got up on his knees and reached over her hips. He picked up the other hand and unlocked that one too. She sat up. He tossed the loose chains and the shackles onto the floor. They landed with a clamor. She winced at the sound and flexed her wrists. She looked down at them. He unfastened the chain from her collar and unlocked the collar. It opened on a hinge. She took in a deep breath. He slid the collar from her neck. She touched her throat, then touched her wrists. She clasped one in each hand. She felt fragile and weightless.

"What…?"

His voice was soft and quiet. "Your stuff is…uh, outside the door and your car. It's in the front yard. So uh you can…go." He scratched the back of his neck and looked sideways. "Whenever you like. Just go ahead and walk out. If…if that's what you want."

"I don't understand."

He glanced at her. "I didn't know you had a cat."

"Um." She looked down. "Yes. He's, uh…Persian."

He nodded. "Uh huh."

She took in a breath. "I want to go upstairs."

He got off the bed. "Okay."

Rhiannon moved backward off the bed. She looked around the inside of the small room and touched her throat. She looked at him. He opened the door and walked out and left the door standing wide open. She saw old concrete walls framed in the door that looked like dirt buried in shadows and smelled cobwebs and the kind of light that comes from a bare bulb. She heard his feet on the stairs. She went to the doorway and rested her hands on the frame and looked out. Her blue walls were stripped down to studs and sheetrock on the opposite side. Fresh nails gleamed. She picked up her purse and her clothes. There was an old clawfoot tub in one dark corner and a huge laundry sink and exposed copper pipes laced the ceiling. On the opposite side of the big basement room an hydraulic hoist looked half-installed. Long heavy chains dangled from it. She counted fourteen.

"This is your…your…wow."

He sat down on the wooden stairs. "Yeah."

"Holy shit. This is some fuckin setup. Damn." She walked to the chains and touched them with light fingers. "I've never done it but I've wanted to. There are some guys around here who do them out in the desert. They'll rig you up from these blasted old cottonwood trees along this…arroyo or something. I knew this guy once who did it right when the sun was going down and it was all pink mountain time and he talked about the pink light on his skin, just looking at it with the hooks pulling on his skin like he was in a trance or something. He said the light felt heavy but the weightlessness was amazing. It was like…space. Not outer space but…I dunno." She shrugged and hugged herself and looked up underneath the hoist. "Like outer space but in his head. So it's inner space, maybe."

"Maybe."

She looked at him. "Is that what it's like for you?"

"I don't know. I can't explain it. I-I'm…not so good with words as you."

Rhiannon came to the stairs. She put her foot on the bottom and he stood. He put his hands on the railings. She looped her purse around her neck and her clothes around the purse and looked up at him. She slid her hands onto the railings. With each step forward he moved up and backward. He reached behind and twisted the doorknob. The door opened. Warm light spilled around him and moved across her face. She squinted. An old white refrigerator came into focus. It was covered with magnets, photos, and loose papers. She saw dark cabinets, Formica counters, a shelf full of folded stuff. A light fixture with dead flies in it. He moved aside. The upstairs smelled like the ghosts of meals and sunlight hitting old wood and something else, something animal: trace amounts of skin oils and forgotten hairs and the ancient imprints of old dirty towels left on the floor.

"It's…uh, not very clean up here," he said. "I'm sorry."

Rhiannon stepped onto the linoleum and looked around. She took her purse off her shoulder and set it down. She was captivated by the prosaic existence of potholders, bread in an bag, a stand of knives, a marble cutting board. The wallpaper peeling away in one corner. The key rack. All of the stuff that got pulled into a person's everyday orbit and left to hang meaningless in space, invisible, until eyes like hers came along and struggled for context. She looked at the jumble of stuff like riddles in an ancient language or the detritus of a dead civilization. All of a person's life scattered about in forgotten layers. A dirty pan soaked in the sink. The kitchen was clean and well-kept. Beyond the kitchen was a living room with worn olive green carpet and the shadow of a recliner and beyond that was the front door with a window in it. The window had a shade. A small window over the sink had white curtains and narrow bars and a view of the alley.

"Are you kidding? I wish my house was this clean."

"It wasn't dirty."

"You're flattering me."

He smiled a little.

"I'm sure it..." Her voice lowered and she turned pink. "Looked awful."

"N-No, it…"

Rhiannon took hold of the bottom hem of his shirt and pushed it up. His breath rushed out of him and he looked down at her. He lifted his arms up and she worked the cloth up over his head. He pulled it the rest of the way off, letting it drop to the floor. Her breath quickened and she held up her arms and he stripped the soft tunic off her torso and his mouth landed wet on her neck her face her mouth and their quick panting breaths got tangled in nostrils, tied up in tongue-knots; he yanked her skirt off and lifted her up by the thighs and smothered her mouth with his. She held onto his neck. He dropped her ass on the counter. She unzipped his pants and pushed them down with her toes.

"Wasn't," he gasped.

He thrust inside. She gripped his flanks with her thighs. He held onto her hips. He drove upward and it forced her breath out of her lungs, air rushing back in and claiming her flesh as he struggled to do it harder. He panted into her neck. His knees rattled the lower cabinets. She braced the heels of her hands onto the countertop and bounced a little. It was an orgasm she grasped for, one that required the tight grip of her concentration and the distraction of the pain, her strained muscles and the hard edge of the counter digging into the tender backs of her thighs. It came wet and slick and commandeered by violent motion. She felt the seizure in him, the long locked-down grunt. Sweat crackled on her skin and the air turned it cool. She shivered. He tried to catch his breath and caught her face instead, holding her by the jaws. Her teeth chattered. He shook her head but it was a gentle motion. Her breath succumbed to gravity. She put her hands on his forearms and he kissed the corner of her mouth with cool lips.

"Where do you sleep?"

He hugged her. "Upstairs."

"I want to go up there." She spoke into his hair. "I want to go up. I want to be in your bed. Is that okay?"

He nodded. "Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Uh-huh."

She put her fingers through his hair. "I want a cigarette."

"You can have one."

"Would you let me tie you down?"

"Uh…y-yes."

She started to feel dizzy. She leaned her nose into his forehead. "Would you let me cut you?"

The words slid through his body and hooked through his pelvis and jerked. "Oh," he breathed. "Oh…yes."

"I'm a professional," she whispered. "Don't be afraid."

He touched her face. "I'm not."

"Open a window for me," she said. "I want to smell the heat."


	11. Message

"…and if you're still on the line you probably want to leave a message, so go ahead and do it at the beep. Ronnie, Steve, or Rhiannon will get back to you as soon as we can."

BEEP.

"Hey." Pause. "It's Rhiannon and I'm okay, I'm all right, so Steve stop freaking out I can hear you doing it from here. Yeah. I um had some issues with my cell phone, and I haven't been at home for the last couple of days…there's a story and someday I'll tell you it, or maybe I will, I don't know yet. At any rate today is not that day. It's just been…stuff. Stuff happening. Personal stuff. I called the brass and managed somehow to keep my job and I rescheduled most of my appointments for next week. But I'm okay. It's okay. I appreciate it. I'll catch up with you guys later. So…bye."

The line disconnected. The dial tone hummed for a few seconds, loud in the empty lobby, and then that disconnected too.


	12. Cut

Above him on the ceiling: hummingbirds, thirty-two of them plus twenty, a sheaf of years. She asked about them, about the pictures on the walls and the notes, the printed glyphs; he told her about the endless hunger and the vengeance of Huitzilopochtli, the blood of his sweat and the sweat of his blood.

Rhiannon was mesmerized by the obsidian knife. She picked it up. She turned it over, fingers tender and gentle on the rippled blade, and held it up and watched the light fall through fluted edges the color of old blood. His eyes followed her eyes as they traced its brute shape. Her pupils unfurled and made dark bottomless flowers. She handled it like a living extension of his flesh and the ghosts of her fingers tingled under his skin. All of her attention was given to the blade. She lifted it up and arched her wrist so the bone haft balanced on the heel of her hand. A rolling dance between skin and stone, a fine tremor quivering at her fingertips, a gradual flexion of her wrist. The tendons buried there popped up and made a valley for the blade to slide into. The stone shifted. He held his breath. Her veins screamed blue beneath her alabaster skin. Light flecked off the blade's surfaces. She stretched out her arm and lifted it to eye level.  
"Is it sharp?"

He let out his breath. "N-No."

She put the knife back on the nightstand. "Pity."

"The edges are retouched so…so it won't be." His guts melted and curled around his bones. "It's a…a reproduction."

"When it's knapped properly, an obsidian blade is a molecule thick on its leading edge." She touched the blade. "It'll slice through so quick the flesh doesn't have time to register pain. You have to wait for it. You have to bleed for it. The blood comes and you'll feel that first and then the pain comes in splintered throbs, like it's your heart beating in the wound. Of course, if the wound is deep enough, you'll pass out." She smiled and ran a finger along the haft. "This handle isn't suited to my hand." She glanced at him. "And it's not sharp. Such a pity."

"W-What…do you want me to…to do?"

She got up on her toes and whispered into his ear: "I want to see your face this time."

His eyes closed. "Uh."

She kissed the curve in his jaw. "On your back."

He nodded. "Okay."

He got on his bed. It was smaller than the one in the basement, the one he'd built the blue room around; this bed was smaller and dressed in white cotton sheets that smelled of sleeping skin and a faded brown comforter that looked like it had seen better days. The pillows were scrunched and folded and jammed up against the headboard. He smoothed the sheets and pulled up the comforter while she opened her kit. She set up the scalpels and the alcohol pads, arranged them on the nightstand in the shadow of the obsidian knife. He got on the bed and laid down on his back. She tucked a pillow beneath his head. She moved his arms like they were doll's arms. He looked at her as she tied a length of rope around his wrist, watched her with raw eyes and an expression flayed and lifted up in gentle layers, peeled back until there was trembling and grief and the silken agony of waiting. She tied the arm to the headboard. She picked up his remaining wrist. The touch of her hand spurred his breath, and he was torn between the urge to close his eyes and the desire to look at her. She looped the rope around his thick bones and knotted it. He started to pant. She brushed his cheek with her knuckles. His eyelids lowered and he opened his mouth.

"I'm going to hurt you," she whispered. She touched his lip. "I'm going to make you bleed."

His breath caught. He jerked at her fingertips.

"I need you to be still for me."

He took a deep breath and let it out. He closed his eyes. He nodded. She lashed his other wrist to the headboard.

"Please look at me."

He pulled on the ropes and they burned. Icy panic clung to the back of his neck and melted in trickles, dripping down his spine. The inside of his belly felt sharp and quivering. He opened his mouth and took deep hacking breaths and at the warmth of her skin his wrists curled, fingers tightening into fists.

"Carl."

His eyelashes struggled apart. She kissed the space between his eyebrows and his face lifted into the moisture of her breath and the slickness of her mouth and the sensation squeezed between his vertebrae and there was too much heat, so much sweat yearning to climb out of his skin. The insides of his lips itched for hers. He hauled against the urge to touch her. She opened an alcohol pad and the sound tore through him. The bones in his shoulders ached. He let his head fall back into the pillow. He smelled sharp chemicals and his eyes filled with the unfocused texture of her skin, its shadows and hollows intruding upon his mind. The pad touched down between his collarbones. She wiped in deep strokes, the chill strange and paralyzing. She moved astride him, the insides of her thighs warm and soft. Her belly flattened into his. The heat in his belly rose to meet the heat in her skin and the metallic brush of her nipples. She kissed the side of his nose.

"Look at me."

He did.

"Look."

She held a small scalpel poised between her fingers. It rested there with ease, the languid curve of the handle relaxed within her joints and aligned with the curve of her wrist. Her fingers looked elegant and full of subtle skill. The blade hovered. His eyes widened and focused on the sharp point; he felt its magnetism, the powerful draw of its keen edge and the promises it whispered. Its tiny pinprick of light subsumed him. Stillness floated down over him in disintegrating layers and melted into his skin. It trickled through his flesh. The edges of his perception softened. He curled up inside the warm cocoon of his skin and waited. She leaned her forearm into the mattress and looked at him and saw this waiting, tasted his patience. He looked at her eyes and they looked down. They focused. Her hot breath climbed his cheek and the edge of the blade touched between his collarbones like a cool feather.

"Be still," she whispered. "There's a pulse hiding in here."

As if she'd willed it into existence he felt it, the sudden thrum of his blood and the hot beat of it pushing against the blade. A burst of adrenaline scratched a match on the inside of his ribs; it dilated his eyes and gilded everything: the bridge of her nose, the gleam of her skin, her soft bristles of hair. The burst wrung through his belly and poured up his spine. His ankles started to shake. His breath came aground on the shallows. His hands tightened on the ropes. She applied pressure to the blade and the skin broke beneath it with a sudden yielding. He moaned. She drew a slow sparking line, a deepening ache between the collarbones and down to the sternum. The frantic beat of his heart rose up into his voice. His head twitched. His collarbones rose and fell, twisting the ache around into a burning steady throb. The outrage of his neurons sunk into him, wove through him like a thorny ribbon and wrapped him in tight silken loops made of breath and skin. He panted. The blood welled, a steady ticklish fever, and filled the straining hollow of his throat. She dipped a pinky into this living chalice of flesh and drew a line across one cheekbone. Fire bloomed in his chest. Loose heat crawled inside his thighs. She touched her ring finger to the blood and painted the other side. The wet swaths of skin tingled. She looked at him and put both fingers in her mouth. She sucked them.

He looked at her. He looked into her.

The incisive kiss carved a second line. It got lost in a wash of pain, a harsh and sensuous gnawing.

She lowered her face. "Does it hurt?"

Fat beads of sweat glistened on his top lip. "Yes."

"Do you like it?"

His voice broke. "Yes."

The blade insinuated its way into his skin. She drew down and it split, obedient to the ruthless nature of steel. His consciousness caught fire. It sparked and fragmented into ash and the bottom sizzled and smoked and fell out. He plunged into dizzying depths.

"…and though Coyolxauhqui schemed against their mother, and the four hundred others schemed against her," Rhiannon whispered, slicing a fresh line, "he was born with a maquahuitl in hand, he came out of the womb armed, and he killed them all and made stars of their bodies."

He took shallow breaths. He swallowed and closed his eyes.

"Look at me, Carl." Her voice. "I want you with me. I'm with you and I want you with me." Soft as ash. "I want you. I want you with me. Stay with me?"

"Oh-okay." The sound of his own voice melted through a starry sky. He opened his eyes and saw the ceiling. "Yes." His eyes were unfocused. "Yes."  
She cut. Her hand hovered over the skin as it split open. Blood flowed, a dark rich red scented with dead oceans and hot metal. It ran down his neck. It dripped on the sheets. "He dismembered her," she whispered. "And flung her limbs to the moon…and cut…a bell…into her cheek."

His neck arched and he moaned, a long wavering sound that cracked into a higher register before losing strength.

"Almost done," she whispered. "Almost."

The shallow breaths kept him aloft. The pain took the place of his mind and he lived in the flesh, sunk deep into it and twisted as if ensnared in a thicket of nettles; it was like fire ants marching on his bones, like unraveling, like gaps opening up between veins and skin and longing and memory. His consciousness funneled down into his throbbing points, thickened into stinging honey that struggled through those tight channels: wrists and neck, chest and groin.

She smiled. The sight of her simple joy, the uncontrolled surge of it, and the way it loosened her cheeks and flowed up to the corners of her eyes arrested him. She put the bloodstained scalpel on the nightstand. It fell with a clink. She picked up a hand mirror. She held it up and the image danced in her trembling fingers, flickered back and forth. He looked up at his own skin and saw blood. There was so much of it. The realization kindled a weakened surge of adrenaline. The tremors settled into his flesh and a touch of dizziness added to the tremor in her hands and the unsteadiness of the glass. Dark clotting lines sliced into his white blood-streaked flesh. Short pointed wings and a long narrow beak sipping from the hollow of his throat. Her lines were straight and elegant.

_A sheaf of years…plus one._

"Do you like it?"

His mouth opened. He willed the words but they wouldn't come. He blinked and exhaled instead.

Rhiannon put the mirror down. "Are you all right?"

He didn't know.

"Carl?" She touched his forehead and her light fingertips overrode the pain. "Say something."

The word came out dusty. "Something."

She grinned like a little girl and giggled like one too. "How do you feel?"

He looked at the ceiling. "Sanctified."

The girlishness melted out of her face. "What does that mean?"

"I am in cem-anáhuac yoyótli," he whispered. "In the heart of the one world."

She looked at him. He gazed at the ceiling and his eyes came back into focus. The timorousness ran out of him. She put her head on his shoulder and left it there for the space of three breaths. On the fourth she closed her eyes and he touched her temple. Her chest froze. He stroked the fuzz of her hair and her muscles relaxed. His hand settled on the back of her neck. She closed her eyes. She rested a hand on his chest. The blood started to turn sticky.

"I should clean you up," she murmured. "Put some plastic on the wound. It helps the lines set properly. They'll smudge if you scratch them too much."

His slow breath filled the passing seconds.

"So don't scratch."

"Okay."

He felt her smile, her cheek pushing into his shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"Yes."

"Will you be all right if I leave you?"

"I…I think so."

"I'll be right back."

He closed his eyes and he felt her departure. The mattress lifted beneath her absent weight and he listened to her footsteps cross the floor. He imagined her in her nakedness, tall and slim as a length of white ribbon but twice as smooth and luminescent and infinitely more fluid. He listened to her move around the kitchen. He counted her footsteps and moved his hand across the place where she had been, the cooling cotton of the bedclothes and the rumpled impression of her flesh.

She came back and he felt a washcloth on the broken skin of his chest. It hurt a little, but it was a good kind of hurt. It was commonplace and utilitarian. The damp cloth felt cool and her touch was gentle. She soaked up the loose blood and wiped away the drying trails. She hummed a little, some tuneless thing or a melody he did not know, something so quiet and soft that it wavered in and out through each breath. She touched the cloth to the cuts, patting them with a light even pressure, blotting up the tiny water-softened clots. He listened to her voice. He took in her breath-softened notes and absorbed the competence of her fingers. She cleaned. Her humming was like the muted song of a bird. She dried the cuts and pressed a piece of plastic wrap flush to the damp skin.

"You don't have any tape," she said. "Or at least I couldn't find any. You'll have to tape it later. I guess I don't have to do it right now. It'll still scar if you don't leave the plastic on it but the scars will set better with it."

"This isn't work. You don't have to work right now."

She closed her mouth and blushed. It started in her chest and climbed up into her face. Her forehead glowed like a coal. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

She laid down on her stomach beside him. She tucked her arms beneath her chest and put her head on the pillow.


	13. Deep Fried Maggots

"Hey, Rhi. There are a couple of guys here to see you."

Rhiannon paused at her locker, head turning at the way Sheri said the word _guys_. Most of the time it was a word she uttered with relish; Sheri had just uttered _guys_ the same way she might've uttered _deep fried maggots_. Rhiannon fished her cigarettes out of her purse, stuffed her stethoscope onto the top shelf, and closed the locker. "So what's the deal?"

"I don't know. They're, like, lawyers or something. I told Diane I'd pass the message."

"Diane knows I'm on my break."

"Yeah, but she figured breaking the break rule was important enough. So why would a couple of lawyers want to see you?"

Rhiannon shrugged. "Dunno. I guess I'll let you know."

"All righty. You want me to send em out to the butt hut?"

"No. Did Diane tell you what she was going to do with them?"

"Park em in the lobby, I think."

"Okay."

Rhiannon took the elevator down to the lobby floor. There were two men hanging near the reception desk, and at first glimpse she could see where Sheri came by her disgusted tone; both were suited up and somber, with blank expressions. Both of them noticed her approach at the same time. They stood up straighter, even though their spines already put steel to shame. "Are you boys looking for me?"

"Are you Rhiannon Heath?"

Rhiannon held up her name tag and smiled a little. "Don't you all have to read to get into law school?"

The older of the two pulled out an ID. "I'm SSA Aaron Hotchner with the FBI, and this is Dr. Spencer Reid. We'd like to ask you a few questions."

"Oh. Really. Um…why?"

Reid spoke up. "We're wondering if maybe you're still working as a piercer at the Pink Siamese?"

Rhiannon snorted. "Is this some kind of joke? I mean, are you guys strippers or something?" She looked around for the punch line. "Because if you all really were with the FBI, then you'd know the Pink closed its doors a year ago. I'm still piercing, but I'm doing it at Wicked Skins." She lifted her chin at Reid. "Why? Looking to get a guiche?"

Reid blushed. "No."

"But you know what the hell I'm talking about." Rhiannon grinned. "Points for that."

"We're investigating a man who got pierced at the Pink Siamese about a year and a half ago." Hotchner caught her gaze and held it. "He was about six-four, muscular build, maybe thirty years old. It was an unusual piercing."

Reid rocked on the balls of his feet. "Does the name Carl Stargher ring any bells?"

"Look. I need to smoke." Rhiannon pulled her cell phone out of her pants pocket. She checked the display. "You all can come outside with me if you like. If not, well…this line of questioning is going to have to wait. It's a bit of a walk. You have to leave the damned state to have a cigarette these days. It's regulation."

"It's very important that you tell us what you know about him," said Hotchner. "Any memory at all would be significant."

"You double-majored in anthropology and nursing," mused Reid. "Is that how you became interested in body modification?"

Rhiannon relaxed a little. "I was always interested in it, but school put more of an academic spin on things. I learned that nothing is really new. I'm sure the records are still around, if you want to look them up."

"The records aren't important," said Hotchner. "We need to know what you remember. Anything."

"So you know I pierced him. And you know where I went to school."

"We know you studied with Fakir Musafar in 2004," said Reid.

"Yeah. So what's with all this cloak and dagger shit? Is something going on with Carl?"

"You know him?" Reid asked.

"I remember him," Rhiannon shot back. "His was the only suspension piercing I've ever done. You don't forget something like that."

"What do you remember about him?"

"He was quiet. I don't know. What the hell do you want from me?"

"There's no need to get hostile, Ms. Heath," said Hotchner. "If you like, we can go outside."

"I like. Let's go."

The three of them walked out into the fragrant desert night.

"You have to drive off the property," she said. "To smoke."

"All right," said Hotchner. "We'll drive off the property, then."

The three of them climbed into a dark blue sedan. Rhiannon rolled down the window in the back seat and watched the parking lot lights pass by. The car passed over the invisible property line and Rhiannon shook a cigarette from her pack. She tucked the butt into the corner of her mouth, striking a match. "There's a bench over there." She lit up. "If you want to pull over."

Hotchner did. Rhiannon climbed out of the car and strode over to the stone bench. Hotchner stood a few feet away from her. "All right." She sucked in smoke. "What is this shit?"

"Pardon me?"

"I said, what is this shit?"

"Mr. Stargher is in a coma." Reid sat down beside her. "Prior to his incapacitation, Mr. Stargher was killing women in a very specific and very ritualized manner. He abducted a woman named Julia Hickson and stashed her in an undisclosed location. We need to find her."

Hotchner watched her face. "You don't seem surprised."

"How the fuck does someone react to this kind of information? Are you disappointed that I haven't grabbed my chest and fallen to the ground? Fuck you, SSA Hotchner. Fuck you sideways with a long cactus."

His face remained neutral. "Do you have any idea where she might be?"

"Why ask me?" Rhiannon held the cigarette near her face. "Why not ask his…mechanic, or I dunno, maybe his doctor? What makes you think I know anything?"

Reid cleared his throat. "Stephen Kowalski, your former co-worker? He seemed to think you and Mr. Stargher had some sort of personal relationship."

Rhiannon flicked her cigarette butt into the darkness. "Stephen Kowalski couldn't find his dick with a GPS."

"And Ronald Delgado corroborated," Reid continued.

"They're both wrong."

Hotchner peered into her face. "I don't believe you."

"That's shocking."

"So…what happened to the Pink Siamese?" Reid interjected.

Rhiannon's eyes homed in on him. "Mike moved to San Diego. Took his shop with him."

"I see," said Reid. "So did you know each other? You and Carl?"

Rhiannon glanced at her phone display. "Look, fellas, I really need to get back to work, though this has been a lovely chat. Don't bother with the ride. I'll walk back."

"Ms. Heath. If there's anything." Hotchner handed her a card. "I mean, anything at all. Please don't hesitate to call."

Rhiannon stuffed it into her pocket. "Yeah. Sure."

* * *

"When did he lapse into the coma?"

Morgan glanced at a file. "Sometime yesterday morning."

"Each tape is the same," said Rossi. "He provides food, drinking water, a bench, and a toilet. Periodically, a shower starts. It's on some kind of timer—he's a real handyman, our guy. He wants them to think what's happening to them is just a simple kidnapping. That there's a possibility of rescue, survival. But there isn't. He's torturing them. At forty hours, the drain shuts. The water starts and doesn't stop."

"Reports show minimal activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. And here, the anterior cingulate cortex. It's what helps distinguish between external and internal stimuli," offered Reid.

Rossi leaned back in his chair. "So what the hell does that mean?"

"He's schizophrenic."

"What about Thorazine? Can't they just shoot him up full of something?"

Reid shook his head. "Nah, the normal psychotropic medicines don't work. Have you ever heard of Whalen's Infraction?"

"No," said Hotchner. "What is it?"

"In any schizophrenic, the aforementioned areas are affected but with Whalen's, they're hit hard and they're hit fast. Stargher's neurological system was infected by a virus _in utero_ that remained dormant for thirty years. He's probably been showing signs for awhile, but with no one around to notice them…to, you know, point them out…well, anyway, the infraction—the actual breach—didn't happen until this morning." Reid shrugged, moving hair out of his face. "The triggers vary, but the results don't."

"He's the only one who know where she is," said Morgan.

Rossi cut in: "Any luck with the ex-girlfriend?"

"According to her, she was never his girlfriend," said Hotchner. "And no. No luck."

"No," said Reid. "She was pretty uncooperative."

"So we'll go back to his house," said Prentiss. "There's still a lot to do: analyze the videos, track sales of the bleach, dig through his records. Maybe he's got property somewhere."

"Those women. He keeps them in that fucking thing for forty hours, man." Morgan held up a videocassette. "We know he got Julia at seven-thirty. So how much time you think we have?"

"You know, this is kind of a long shot." Reid trailed off, his voice unfocused and dreamy. "You guys…have any of you heard of the Campbell Center?"

"Why don't you enlighten us," said Rossi.

* * *

_It's always hard when they die._ Diane, thinking that it was about poor old Diego Ortiz, who had been ninety anyway when he caught the cancer that stole the last of his pathetic withered life at exactly nine sixteen p.m.

Rhiannon's rattled mind free-associated those numbers: September sixteenth, nine inch nails and a sweet sixteen one to fix the other down in some mythical time and nine plus one plus six equals sixteen, what's so damned sweet about it anyway, sweet sixteen and never been kissed and what a fucking joke that was. It's always hard when they die, except when it isn't. Poor old Diego had come onto the unit on a respirator and stayed that way until his granddaughter came in and pulled the plug. She'd had hard eyes, that look of a girl who has seen way too many things buried in the darkness of her short life. Rhiannon bet dollars to doughnuts that Sonia Ortiz's sixteen wasn't sweet. No doughnuts, no sugar, nothing sticking to her cracked lips. The girl's lean ragged body with its silver scarred elbows and her blurry schoolyard tats looked like maybe its sixteenth year had been spent on the streets, or scrounging in some junkie's crash pad long before she cleaned up off the drugs but held on to her hard eyes, that long sleepless look carved out of obsidian. Diego's departure was a blessing.

Diane didn't know shit.

Rhiannon signed out and thought about Sonia's eyes, how nervous and tight they were, wondered if maybe she'd inherited that obsidian glint from her dead grandfather. She finished with her charting and went into the locker room. She stripped out of her scrubs and dumped them into the laundry and walked in underpants to her locker. She hauled out her civilian clothes and when she slammed the locker door the clang made her jump out of her skin and her heartbeat pounded adrenaline though her system, making her fingers prickle and her eyes water. _I need it tonight._ She leaned her head into the cool metal and breathed, her blood twisting through the vessels on its way to her lungs. The canned air got to her and she started to shiver. _I don't care._ She pulled on faded jeans and a white tube top, shoved her feet down into black rattlesnake boots. _I need to forget. It's always hard when they die, but it's harder when they live._

She went into the bathroom and under its harsh light she put on some red lipstick. She adjusted her tube top, the sequins of the albino dragon design flat and lacking, chilled to sleep by the harsh fluorescent light. She rubbed her eyes and applied just a touch of blue mascara before pushing out the flesh-colored plugs and stringing heavy gauge spirals through her earlobes. _How to tell the nice buttoned-up men from the FBI how Carl had pulled a ghost act the minute I went back to work, disappearing for months? At least I think it was months, I don't know, I gave up after two, stopped going by his place and looking for lights on in the attic, stopped getting angry and horny and feeling hurt, wishing for some way to bleed the hot dreams out and soak them up and keep them or burn them or both._ She rubbed a touch of Tenochtitlan between her wrists. _You don't. You don't tell anyone, because there's no way to do it. The words will not pull themselves into the right order._ She pushed a studded belt through her belt loops and cinched the jeans around her hips. _They won't bend into linguistic proportions. Carl wasn't right. He was never right. It doesn't matter._ She stashed the makeup in her purse and tossed the purse over one shoulder. A quick check to make sure she was alone before snapping off the light.

Rhiannon liked the hospital at night. It soothed her, the miles of tiles mocking the bustle of the day with their silence. The heels of her boots clicked and echoed and softened and died. In the evenings she shared the hallways with other nurses and custodial staff, folks on their silent way from one place to another, background people who were never lost. It was the most frequent question poised on the lips of visitors: can you point me here? Can you tell me where I am? Do you know where I'm going? Forget the maps on the walls, the red X announcing that you are here; ask that woman, she's in scrubs, she's part of the furniture and she'll ask the walls if she doesn't know and the knowledge will whisper up through the soles of her feet. Her stethoscope is a compass. In the overnight hours they were all alone together; they and the walls, they and the patients, they and the empty brooding furniture. The nurses and the janitors and the patients knew where they were, knew who they were; more often than not they cherished the silence.

But not this guy. Not this woman, either. The guy, sitting in one of mauve chairs and flipping through a magazine while the woman stood and held her elbows and looked anxious. Rhiannon had seen it before; anxiety in all its forms prowled the hospital corridors, day and night. Rhiannon studied them as she walked down the long hallway, and as she did she made up their story: similar dark coloring and an age difference, maybe an uncle and niece waiting together for word on someone in surgery, someone close to the niece on account of her fidgeting and its contrast to the calm of the uncle, sitting there at ease with one ankle propped up on the other knee while eyeballing some photo-spread of the Galapagos islands in an ancient dog-eared edition of National Geographic. She stood on trouser-clad legs in her good black shoes and moved her eyes over everything, the bad art the soft lighting the directories listing the contents of the various floors and the closed-down gift shop with its refrigerated display of sickbed flowers; _oh yeah, he's the support while she's keeping the vigil_. The woman glanced at Rhiannon. This close up, and Rhiannon noticed how attractive she was: large dark eyes, long nose, pretty burgundy mouth. She shifted her purse higher on her bare shoulder and flashed a brief smile as the automated doors whooshed apart. Behind her, a man's voice spoke her name. She pivoted around in mid-step.

"Do I know you?"

It was the uncle, standing up. He still held the magazine in his hand. "I don't think so."

"Who are you?"

The woman flashed open her ID. "My name is Emily Prentiss. This is David Rossi. We're with the FBI."

Rhiannon flung up her hands. "Fuck, how many of you _are_ there?"

Rossi cocked his head. "You wanna go for a ride?"

"With you?"

Prentiss walked into the vestibule. She paused at the outer doors and folded her arms, looking back. She waited. Rossi tossed the magazine onto an end table and approached Rhiannon. "Please." He looked into her eyes. "This won't take very much of your time."

Rhiannon sighed. She rubbed her forehead with tented fingers. "All right."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The center scene in this chapter is extrapolated heavily from dialogue found in The Cell's original script. While I cut it up, paraphrased it, patched it together, swapped it around, and gave it to entirely new characters, I must give credit where credit is due.


	14. Smoking Hot

Rhiannon slumped in the back seat while the yellow line materialized in the headlights. The city glittered in the starlight like a cheap sequin gown tossed across a shallow canyon. She rolled down the window.

"Are you hungry?"

Rhiannon leaned her face into the wind. "Yes."

Rossi half-turned in his seat. "What do you want?"

"Jack in the Box?"

"All right, then."

Prentiss found a frontage road jammed full of motor courts and fast food places. She pulled out of traffic. She parked the car and Rhiannon hauled her purse into her lap. She yanked it open and started to dig. Rossi put up a hand. "I'll get it. What do you want?"

"Jumbo Jack with Cheese." She looked at him. "And a big Coke."

He nodded. "Emily, do you want anything?"

She shook her head.

Rossi climbed out of the car, slammed the door shut, and strode toward the garish restaurant. A breeze puffed in off the highway, smelling like oil stains, sun-blasted concrete, and the ghosts of flattened condiment packets. Prentiss glanced in the rearview. "Those are some nice tats."

Rhiannon gave a half-smile. "Thanks."

"I especially like the one you've got here." She touched the space beneath her collarbones. "That's some really great detail work."

Rhiannon's fingertips crept to the hummingbird inked into her chest. The pointed green wings spread out beneath the shape of her collarbones, its long beak sipping nectar from a red flower tattooed in the hollow of her throat. The petals of the blossom twitched in the grip of her pulse. "Yeah," she said. "That's Ronnie Boy's work. He's a fucking artist, all the way. He's still around, if you're interested. I've got a card somewhere."

Prentiss laughed. "Oh no. I don't think so."

"Oh, come on. Just a little heart for the old man. With some angel wings. Right over the tit." Rhiannon grinned. "He'll like it."

"Nah, there's no old man. Besides, I'm not exactly the tattoo type."

"Everyone's the tattoo type," said Rhiannon, leaning up against the back of the passenger seat. "Some folks just don't know it yet. You know, I can't believe a smoking hottie like you is single. There's no justice in this world, is there?"

Prentiss blushed a little. Rossi approached the car with a paper sack in one hand and a huge drink in the other. Rossi handed Rhiannon her drink through the open window. She tilted her chin toward Prentiss. "You think she's smoking hot, right?"

He opened the door. "Pardon me?"

Rhiannon nestled the drink into the holder. "Agent Prentiss. I was just telling her that she's too hot to be single."

"This job doesn't leave us a lot of leftover time." He sounded amused. "Of course, Agent Prentiss _is_ a very attractive woman."

Prentiss started the car. "Okay, Dave, you can stop now."

Rhiannon took a suck off her straw. "Thanks for the food."

"No problem." Rossi buckled his seat belt.

"So where are we going?"

Prentiss glanced in the rearview. "Are you familiar with the Campbell Center?"

Rhiannon pulled her cheeseburger out of the bag. "That's a research hospital, isn't it?"

Rossi rested his arm on the window. "It is."

"Isn't that like in Henderson or something?"

"Yeah."

Rhiannon took a bite. "It's kind of a drive to Henderson."

Rossi turned his face into the wind.

"So that's where Carl is. We're going to see Carl. Catatonic Carl. Oh that's just fucking fabulous. How…how _sweet_. You guys are pieces of fucking work, let me tell you." Rhiannon dropped her half-eaten burger into the bag. She leaned over, her crooked elbow flattened on the back of the headrest, and peered at Rossi's face in the side mirror. "Do you get that a lot? 'Oh, you're a piece of fucking work?' Because you sure as hell are."

Rossi looked at her. "That's a nice tattoo you've got there on your neck. I like the design. I see you have it on your wrists, too. Do you like hummingbirds, Rhiannon?"

She leaned her face between the headrest and the car. "I like a lot of things, Agent Rossi."

Prentiss's shoulders tightened. She kept her eyes on the road.

"I like cigarettes," said Rhiannon. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

"Not at all."

"Terrific." A corner of Rhiannon's mouth twitched into a grin. "I have enough to go around. Do either of you smoke? I can share."

"No," said Prentiss. "Thank you."

"Not for twenty years or so." Rossi patted the outside of the door. "But I appreciate the gesture."

Rhiannon fished a cigarette out of her purse. "Suit yourselves." She lit up and blew smoke toward the ceiling. She leaned back into the seat. She crossed her legs and stuck the tip of her cigarette out the window, letting let the wind shear off the ashes.


	15. Tomatoes

A bushel of tomatoes. Rossi imagines the sturdy basket, the skins that are the perfect sunset color, connected to one another by tough threads of dark withered green. He walks down a hallway, smelling them in his mind, sweet-skinned fruits redolent of the strong sunshine on a southern slope and the sticky ardor of the mustard-colored flowers that birthed them. The hallway is high-end cold white institutional. After tomatoes comes basil. A loose bunch with stems warmed by the hand and leaves torn until the sharp cool scent of stony shade and bruised green leaks everywhere. This memory fills his nose and he opens his mouth to breathe.

Left turn. Right turn. Long rectangles of white light. Rhiannon strides ahead of him with Emily at her side because he wants to see her and not see her at the same time. He thinks about the onions, the god-awful stink of breaching the crinkled skin, as though the flesh beneath were full of stinging pent-up outrage. Tomatoes, basil, onions, garlic. He imagines, filling his mind with each ingredient, using the details to cleanse his observational palate.

He knows this is Carl's room. Emily knows it too but Rhiannon doesn't, and so Rossi thinks about the burgundy, the smooth weight of the bottle in his hand, the sighing vinegar release of the cork. Rhiannon slows, hesitation fluttering into the line of her body, and Emily opens the door. Rossi imagines the tomatoes again, finds them easy to fall into, the bland sweet scent that wants to be stronger, that will be stronger with the crushing and the boiling, that will toughen up; the tomatoes in the basket brought home from a farmer's market, the flesh a scorching summer sunset flayed out of the sky, so delicate and so sly. The tension in Rhiannon's body burns through his thoughts. She approaches the bed, making a wide spiraling circle, all of her movement concentrated into to something a cat might own.

Rossi watches Rhiannon pick up the chart. Emily watches him watching her, retreating into an invisible corner. He watches Rhiannon bring the chart close to her face, her long-fingered hands flipping through the pages, the scan of her eyes on the paper. He takes in the flutter of her blue-tipped ivory eyelashes, the minute tightening of her forearms. Rhiannon's collarbones spread as she takes a deep breath, the wings of the hummingbird beneath them rising and falling, animated by the unconscious pull of her lungs. Emily catches the change before he does; the texture of bell pepper is lingering in the corners of his mind as Rhiannon takes hold of his lapels. The sudden nervous force of her body snaps him into the moment. The chart is on the bed and Emily's pulling her weapon and Rhiannon is in his space, the seconds falling all over one another like snowflakes and clinging to one another until he isn't sure which is which. Is he on the bed? Is the chart against the wall? Rhiannon's skin is white as the walls. Her eyes are the color of water. His back meets the doorframe. Her elbows bend to take the shock. The dull pain comes after, knocking his vertebrae together, and then Rhiannon really _is_ in his face; her nose is inches away from his and her fists are all knotted up in his coat. She is snarling. Her breath smells like tomatoes.

"Let him go," says Emily.

Rossi sees her gun hovering in the corner of his eye.

Rhiannon loosens her grip but doesn't move. "I'm going to enunciate this, because I want to be sure you get it." She leans in. "Fuck you."

Her breath is steamy. A fleck of spittle lands on his upper lip.

Emily's voice gets sharp. "Step away."

Rhiannon lets go of him. She does it with a little push. Rossi exhales long and slow and shuddery, coming down off the balls of his feet. Emily lowers the gun.

"And fuck you, too," Rhiannon says to her.

Emily holsters her weapon. "Rhiannon Heath, you are under arrest for assaulting a federal officer." She reaches for handcuffs. "You…"

Rossi holds up a hand. "No."

"_No_?" Emily's eyebrows go up.

Rossi keeps his eyes on Rhiannon, who is circling out into the hallway. He's calm, almost conversational. "No blood, no foul."

"Fuck this noise, man." She folds her arms and peers over Rossi's shoulder, at the bed. "Fuck it right to hell and back."

"Rhiannon," says Emily, her voice tender. "Did Carl hurt you?"

Rhiannon's eyes narrow and her mouth twitches along with her right arm.

"I see that hand." Rossi touches her wrist, turning his head to stare into her eyes. His tone hardens. "You don't want to go there."

"Fuck you." She wrenches her arm away. "And fuck your Jedi mind crap, too."

"There's a conference room on the second floor, if you want to talk." Rossi draws the words out low and slow. Rhiannon's eyes keep darting around the perimeter of his face and he keeps looking into them. "We can go up there right now. We can have some coffee. You want some coffee?"

She turns her body so she doesn't have to look at him. "No."

"Dave, maybe we should leave her alone for a little while." Emily puts a hand on Rossi's shoulder. She turns her attention to Rhiannon. "We'll be out in the hallway, right around that corner, if you need anything." She pats Rossi's shoulder and lowers her voice. "Come on. Let's go."


	16. In, Out

Hotchner leaned close to the darkened window and peered through the blinds. "Run this by me again?"

"It's a Neurological Cartography and Synaptic Transfer System," said Reid. "It provides a highly detailed map of the mind. Not the brain--any MRI could do that, but this system encodes things like experience, memory, and sensory processing."

"You're saying that someone could plug into Stargher's mind and go for a walk in there."

Reid nodded. "Basically, yeah."

"That's a simplified version," said Dr. Miriam, walking into the room. She was a tall well-dressed black woman with salt-and-pepper braids and a tired but kind face. Morgan and Reid both stood up, but she gestured for them to remain seated. "But it'll do." She looked around and sighed. "We have the board's approval on this, but the final decision rests with Dr. Young. She will, after all, be the one to negotiate this strange new territory."

"Wait," said Morgan. "Why can't just anyone do it? Why can't one of us go in? Your Dr. Young has no experience dealing with guys like Stargher."

Dr. Miriam sat down and crossed her legs. "You don't have the experience. There's a lot more to it than just plugging in. There's a very potent drug cocktail involved, some potentially frightening side effects, and it's easy to get lost. Trust me."

Hotchner turned around. "Get lost? What do you mean?"

"We embed a chip in the receiver's hand." Dr. Miriam shifted around to look at him. "It's sort of a panic button. The mind is very gullible, Mr. Hotchner. There's always the danger that the receiver will come to believe that the mind-environment is real."

"Hotch," he said.

"All right then, Hotch." She smiled. "You may call me Adele."

"All right, Adele." He nodded. "You were saying?"

"She is entering someone else's mind. This isn't like walking into someone's home and going their things to get an idea of who they are. This is all of a person's memories, the sum of his or her experiences, and a person's self-concept. It is a vivid world that you would be entering, with its own rules. Those rules may be nothing like the rules of the world you're familiar with. It's a dream made real. Or a nightmare made real. Dr. Young--Katherine--has some experience working with coma patients. She's a psychologist who has been trained for this sort of thing. Tell me, Hotch, would you send someone with no training and no experience directly into the field? Regardless of the situation?"

"Absolutely not. It wouldn't even merit discussion. I understand your position, Adele, and thank you for clarifying."

"My pleasure."

"But couldn't someone go in with supervision? Maybe team up Dr. Young with one of us? You said she's been working with kids. This guy--there's gonna be shit in his mind that'll make her piss in her pants…pardon my language," said Morgan. "But we're running out of time. If she can't get in there and get what we need to know, then there's no point in her going in at all."

"Henry's discussing it with Katherine." Adele looked at her watch. "We should have her answer very shortly."

Morgan looked around. "Where the hell are Rossi and Prentiss?"

Reid shrugged. "They'd picked up Rhiannon after her shift at the hospital. I presume they're bringing her here."

Adele turned in her chair to look at him. "Who's Rhiannon?"

"She's the one who put the rings in his back." Hotch moved away from the window and took a seat at the table. "In the routine questioning of her coworkers it came up that she and Stargher possibly had a personal relationship."

"Personal relationship?"

"That they were dating," offered Reid. "Or sleeping together, or whatever."

"You think she might be able to help?

"It's entirely possible that she'd know what sorts of questions to ask," said Reid.

"Rhiannon should speak with Dr. Young before she goes in," said Hotch. "Provided, of course, that she agrees to do it."

J.J. appeared in the doorway with a petite Latina at her side. She was dressed in jeans and a tank top, her dark hair tied back in a low ponytail. Both women held Styrofoam coffee cups.

"I agree," said Dr. Young.

"Katherine, are you sure?"

"I'm sure, Adele."

J.J. put her coffee on the table. "If you like, I'll go and arrange Stargher's transfer to the Neuro wing."

"Thank you, J.J." Hotch shifted his eyes to Katherine. "When can we begin?

* * *

Rhiannon went to the bed and looked down. Her eyes took in the lines and the colors separately, underscored them with the beat of the monitoring equipment until the slow rise and fall of Carl's chest became a dance. All of it constricted into this box, a landscape of waffle-weave limbs and clear plastic tubing snaking across the walls and dark eyes that wouldn't close, a slow rhythm. She pulled up a chair and sat down. In, out. In, out. She closed her eyes and inhaled the room's antiseptic breath. In, out. In, out. She heard the FBI agents out muttering in the hall. She touched Carl's hand. Warm dead curling meat. His breath was buried in his skin, a slow metronome. The languorous blood pushed through his veins. She leaned over and smelled his hair, got a whiff of bleach and hospital shampoo. She smelled his jaw. The cadence of her breath lifted, got a little sharper. She moved the blanket, her fingers tracing the ribbons on his skin, the ones she had cut there. His chest rose into her palm and settled back, lifted up again. She leaned down and put her lips next his ear: "_Cem-anáhuac yoyótli_."

More nothing.

Rhiannon straightened up. She smoothed the blanket back into place and adjusted the fall of IV tubing. Rossi stepped into the room. At the sound of his feet she slumped back in the chair and folded her arms, resting one foot on the bed's rail. Her face slanted toward the wall. "What do you want?"

He put his hand on the back of the chair. "What I want you to do is look at me."

Her ass shifted, curling her spine to one side. Her shoulders lifted and so did her face, chin set at a defiant tilt. "I'm looking."

"These girls…no, no," he snapped. "You keep your eyes right here. Right here. These girls, Rhiannon. These dead girls." The word _dead_ sharpened before his voice slid into something softer, something confidential. "You know…they look an awful lot like you." He tilted his head. "You know anything about that?"

"No."

"He, uh…drowned them." His fingers flexed. "Bleached them."

"So?"

"So? Is that all you can say? You wanna know how he drowned em? You wanna know that? He built em a tank. That's right, a fucking tank, like they were little white goldfish and he put em in there and let the water run, that's right. He let it run. Goddammit, Rhiannon, look at me when I'm talking to you because your attitude is _pissing me off_!"

Her eyes narrowed. She shifted her body around.

"He liked to watch em flail. Yeah. Swimming around in there until the air ran out. Recorded video of it so he could enjoy it later. Then he'd jizz all over the dead body, you know. Like it was a tissue." He leaned in and lowered his voice. "That the guy you know?"

Rhiannon put her hand over his tie, high up near the knot. "Agent Rossi."

His breath skipped. "Yeah."

Her voice lowered. "Get out of my face. If you don't, I'm going to knock your block off." She nudged the heel of her hand into his breastbone. "I'm going to push you away from me…really hard. Do you understand?"

"Did you know him, Rhiannon?"

"Dave, I think that's enough."

He took a step back and turned around. Prentiss stood just inside the door, her eyes shifting from Carl's inert body to Rossi's face. "I just spoke to J.J. and there are hospital personnel on their way here to transfer Mr. Stargher up to Neurology."

Rossi straightened out his lapels. "So the board approved it."

"It would seem so."

Rhiannon stood. "Approved what?"

"Some experimental memory retrieval system." Prentiss looked at her. "There's a doctor here who can plug into his mind."

Rhiannon shouldered her bag. "What the hell kind of sci-fi bullshit is _that_?"

"It's our last chance." Prentiss shrugged. "At this point we'll try anything. We were hoping, actually, that _you_ would debrief Dr. Young before she goes in. Maybe give her a little heads-up as to what she may expect, or how she might best be able to communicate with Carl. But if you can't help us, you can't help us." She smiled. "Thank you for your time. I'll call Hotch and see about getting you a ride back to your car."

"I'll do it," said Rossi.

"No, no," said Rhiannon. "Let me talk to Dr. Young first. I guess it's the least I could do."

Rossi turned around. "I thought you didn't know anything."

"I have impressions."

"And you couldn't tell me?"

Prentiss took a deep breath. "Rhiannon, why don't you come with me?"

"All right."

Rossi started to follow. With a neat sidestep, Prentiss blocked him. She fished a couple of dollars out of her pocket. "Go find a vending machine. Drink something cold."

"Emily, I'm fine."

"Just do it." She put the bills in his hand. "You look thirsty."

He glanced over her shoulder. "What does that mean, exactly?"

"Cool off." Prentiss lowered her voice. "You're a little warm under the collar."

"Oh, is that right?"

Prentiss locked eyes with him. "Yeah. It is. Look, I don't know what your problem is, but you really need to walk it off."

"So now you're telling me what to do? Is that what this is?" He put his hands on his hips and cocked his head. "How old were you when I started doin this job? Ten?"

"Dave…"

He shook his head and made a disgusted noise. "Never mind. I'll meet you in Neurology."


	17. Hummingbirds

"Aztec mythology. He was very into Aztec mythology." Rhiannon and Katherine Young sat together on the wide edge of a fountain in the Neuro wing's moonlit courtyard. "Do you know anything about it?"

Katherine shook her head. "Well, I know a little. But not much. I had this friend in high school named Tonantzin. She told me some, but I don't know much about it. I take it you do."

"Yeah, I know something," said Rhiannon. "I came across it in college. It was interesting so I read a little more on the subject than I needed to."

Katherine sipped her coffee. "So what about Aztec mythology?"

"The hummingbird thing is a reference to Huitzilopochtli. Loosely translated, it means 'Hummingbird of the South' or 'of the Left.' There's more, something with the different aspects of Tezcatlipoca, which translates as 'Smoking Mirror.' And there's something about colors, but the harder I try to think of it the quicker it runs straight out of my mind." Rhiannon sipped her coffee. "He had hummingbirds all over his house. I'm sure they found them."

Katherine smiled. "What do the hummingbirds mean for you?"

"Oh, it's um…nothing like that." Rhiannon put her coffee down and shifted her legs. "I liked them when I was a child. We had hummingbird feeders around the house." She lifted a shoulder. "It's just a childhood thing. They've got nothing to do with Aztec anything."

"So did you grow up in Nevada?"

"Yes." Moths whispered through the light. "I was born up north but we moved here when I was five."

"I'm from San Diego," said Katherine. "I don't know how you all live here without the ocean. I guess if you don't grow up with it, though…you don't really know what you're missing."

"I remember going to Lake Tahoe sometimes. But that's as close as we got."

"I noticed his scarification." Katherine touched the hollow of her own throat. "You wear your hummingbird in the same place. What does it mean?"

Rhiannon colored. "I'm not going there."

"Fair enough."

"There's significance in the bleaching, too, I think." Rhiannon straightened her legs. "Those FBI guys think it has something to do with me but I don't think it does. It's more about Carl's myth of himself. Anyway, you could get a much better idea if you did some research on the internet. Google it or whatever. I'm just telling you what I remember, and it isn't much. I hope it helps you."

"I hope it does, too." Katherine watched Rhiannon's profile. "Is there anything else you want to tell me? Do you know anything about his past, his parents, where he came from?"

Rhiannon shook her head. "No. I don't know any of that. Sorry."

"All right." Her smile softened. "I'll do my best to be kind."

"That's good." Rhiannon picked at the rim of her coffee cup. "Guys like Carl don't get a lot of kindness. Of course, some think he probably doesn't deserve it." She shrugged. "Maybe they're right. I didn't know, you know? I really didn't. That's tough for the FBI to swallow, but I didn't know."

Katherine put a hand on her arm. "Hey. You know, we can talk about this later."

"Yeah, you have to get going, don't you?" Rhiannon pulled the plastic lid into shreds. She smiled a slanted smile. "Get all suited up for your big adventure."

Katherine stood. "Something like that."

"Good luck."

"Hey, thanks."

"De nada."

"So I guess I'll see you on the flip side," said Katherine.

* * *

_Fucking memories, dammit._

The darkness sliding across her skin, the blue quality of the fading light---these things twine up inside the scent of her skin, falling out of a tank top and redolent of early spring flowers, tiny and white and almost without fragrance, a scent you have to work for; yes, you have to put your face in it, all those petals like tiny pieces of delicate skin, faint and sweet and contrasting with the smell of salt. Thyme crushed underfoot. Sound of the ocean. Mound of a smooth breast, welling up over the edge of the neckline, offered in a cradle of slim fingers. Lifting up. His nose buried between them, inhaling. A dark brown nipple, plump and shiny with spit; he loved the look of her nipples after a good suck, how tight and wrinkled they were, how firm. _We're going to get caught. No we aren't, it's all right_

Rossi doesn't know if it's all right. He didn't know then and he doesn't know now. He sits on the toilet with his head against the wall, legs splayed out, trying to get a single deep breath. _Send the oxygen to your tight parts_, he thinks. _Breathe into them and let em loose. Fuck that._ Images of dead women come into his mind and he pushes them away. He concentrates on the memory the way he concentrated on the tomatoes: skin, hair, the sound of a woman's voice at the moment of letting go (not to orgasm but to the burgeoning desire itself, clawing its roots deep into her flesh)--_this is nice, I want nice, I need nice right now, just a little something sweet._ Dark nipples and breathless words falling into the furled purple lips of a strong hairy cunt

She bounced on his lap, controlling it with the big muscles in her thighs and he felt them where they pressed into his hips, the rhythmic pulse, and he wondered if it was the raw knowledge of her exertion that brought him so close: the outside air, her fluttering breath, her breasts jiggling, her buttocks flexing beneath the light touch of his hands

He breathes hard. The wall digs into his scalp. He cups his denim-encased crotch, lets his fingers stroke the shape of his cock. _I wish I'd told her that thing about her nipples, said the words and watched them hit her face._ The smell of bleach on the floor stirs up a whiff of memory: bodies wrapped up in plastic, tied with a bow now ain't that precious, collared like dogs, the skin ghostly and the hair broken with chemicals, eyes cloudy and helpless---_no, there will be no more of this shit._ He unbuckles his belt, unzips his jeans

Her slickness, her heat, the slow tight constriction like being swallowed and then it is being swallowed, the firm muscle of a tongue pressing just right, lingering in all of the most sensitive places, hot sweet silken friction the petals of those flowers turned inside out sweet flesh working

"Aw, shit," he whispers, his softened voice sliding along the walls and cracking between the tiles, his cock swelling in his fist

He grapples with the image: long dark hair, breasts loosened and glazed with night, straining thighs, breath filled with plums and wine, night sky and how hot it was, how slippery, but each stroke loosens the frame and sends it sliding down into soft damp relentless suction. His mouth opens, his breath growing harsh. Lips clamped just right and oh that maddening tongue, faces flashing through his mind, all of them falling apart and shattering the pieces sticking to one another

His heels push into the floor. The toilet seat creaks. His breathing is deep, anticipatory, dipping deep into the canned atmosphere and dumping oxygen all over his straining face. _She was a long time ago_ and _she is right goddamned now_ and _right now_ his hand moves faster

Clink clink the sound of the sound of his wrists held tight in a metallic grasp and his shoulders, the flesh inside of them hurting, twisted far back around so the sockets moan and the breath backs up in his throat with nowhere else to go and knees on his feet, knees heavy and sharp on his insteps clink clink fucking clink goddammit _it's okay Dave_ and _you know he liked doing this to me too_ and _I like hummingbirds_ no more words all of them stuffed down by hands on his thighs all of them grasped twisted buried in a slick-headed mouthful of cock

A long moan spreads out. A wad of toilet paper catches the spill. His breath comes back to him in pieces. _For fuck's sake._ "For fuck's sake, yeah." He lets out a ragged sigh. "Yeah." He gets up, splashes some cold water on his face, blots his cheeks with a handful of paper towels. He takes a piss, one hand propped on the wall behind the toilet. He waits for the headrush and when it comes he lets out another drawn-out breath, all the muscles in his body letting go just a little. He looks at the icy bottle of Coke on the floor and starts to laugh.


	18. But You Knew That

Rhiannon sat on a bench, looking out across a half-empty parking lot to the road beyond. She thought about lighting a cigarette but didn't. She listened to the wind as it cut down off the mountains. The traffic noise was quieter out here, more genteel; commuter engines that drove in straight lines and spent their nights tucked away in safe suburban stucco garages.

"Hey," said a familiar voice. "Fancy meeting you here."

She turned around. The gangly FBI agent melted out of the darkness. He gave her a tight-lipped grin. "Hey. You wouldn't happen to have a light, would you?"

Rhiannon swung her leg around so she was straddling the bench. She smiled as he stepped into the streetlight's pool, digging in her jeans pocket. "Hell yeah. You think I'd go anywhere without a lighter?"

"I don't usually. In fact, I didn't. It's just…ah, I'm out of lighter fluid." Reid fished a cigarette out of a battered pack. "We've been busy and sometimes I don't stay on top of these things."

"No problem." Rhiannon ignited the lighter and handed it over.

"Thanks." He lit up.

"Don't you guys all have to run and pass fitness tests and whatever?" She lifted her chin toward the cigarette caught in his fingers. "Wouldn't this smoking be a problem for you?"

"Yeah, technically." Reid filled his lungs with smoke. "They keep me around for my brain."

"Oh. I see." He flicked the lighter closed and handed it back to her. "So, what are you? Some kind of whiz kid? Because if you've seen thirty yet I'll eat all of the candles on my last birthday cake. You're kind of young to be all big bad BAU."

His mouth quirked. "Something like that. I'm twenty-seven. How old are you?"

"Thirty-five. But you probably know that."

"Yeah, I know that. Born 5 November 1973, driver's license number 2450036 Nevada, youngest of two children. Your mother, Carol Butler Heath, married your father Jason Heath on 21 June 1958 in Reno. You relocated from Austin to Las Vegas in 1978 following the death of your sister, Molly." He took a drag. "I could do this all night."

Rhiannon chuckled. "That's a neat trick. No wonder they keep you around."

"Mind if I sit?"

"No." Rhiannon scooted back. "Go ahead."

"She's, uh, hooked in. Dr. Young? She was hooked in when I left. So what'd you say to her? Agent Rossi mentioned something about impressions." He looked at her. "What does that mean, impressions?"

"You know…impressions." Rhiannon flipped a hand. "Opinions, I guess."

"What were your impressions?"

"He was quiet," said Rhiannon. "And shy. Like he was struggling with everyday social skills and making it over the line into functionality, but just barely. Introverted." She snorted. "Textbook serial, right?"

"Not exactly," said Reid. He turned toward her. "Ted Bundy, for example. He had a very potent charisma, a charm that helped him convince his victims that he was harmless. Such charisma and charm is quite common among sociopaths. They're like chameleons…emotional mimics. But Carl is schizophrenic. Schizophrenics frequently experience difficulties with social functioning. There could've been voices in his head, telling him to do these things."

Rhiannon fished a cigarette out of her purse. "You know, I read most of that guy Rossi's books. _Deviance_, _Frenzy_, and I think _Before They Were Killers_?" She lit up. "There was another one, but I can't remember the title. Anyhow, I had this girlfriend at the time who had a totally awesome mom. She was into all that stuff." She blew out a plume of smoke and grinned. "I suppose every girl has her serial killer phase."

Reid blinked. "Uh, actually, no."

"Anyway, the title I can't remember is the one I didn't read. So, yeah. I read them." She looked toward the road and shrugged a shoulder. "Who knew he'd be such an asshole."

"Well, uh. He's…got…you know." Reid cleared his throat. "Attitude."

"He's not a very good writer, either." Rhiannon flicked ash. She brought the cigarette to her lips. "Not that it matters in this sad illiterate world we live in."

"You know, I'm from Las Vegas myself," he said.

"No shit. Really?"

"Really."

Rhiannon pulled a knee to her chest. "So you have family out here? That must be kind of nice for you, mixing business with pleasure. You must get to travel a lot."

"Yeah. My mom's out here."

"Be sure and visit her while you're out here, if you've got the time and all. My parents are both dead. Appreciate the time while you've got it, say I. So, did you go to school around here?"

"No." He tucked hair behind his ear. "Cal Tech."

"Sweet. University of Nevada, Reno." She gestured with the cigarette. "But you knew that."

He smiled. "I knew that."

"I'll shut up now." She grinned. "Since you're supposed to be grilling me and all."

"Your hummingbirds," he said. "_Archilochus colubris_, the ruby-throated hummingbird. It's the most common species of hummingbird in North America. There are seven other species common to Nevada. Why'd you choose that one?"

"Because it's pretty and green?"

"Is that the only reason?"

"Sure." She ground out the cigarette butt on the sole of her boot. "You said it yourself. It's the most common kind."

"Could I have a closer look?"

"Sure. Yeah." She held out her arm. "Look all you want."

He brought his face closer to the back of her wrist. "Very detailed work. Nice."

"Yeah, it is."

He looked at her. "So did you tell Dr. Young about the Mesoamerican mythology?"

Rhiannon withdrew her arm. "I did. You're one of those people with the really really good memory."

"It's eidetic memory," he said. "And yeah. I've got it."

"And you read a bunch of stuff about Aztec mythology once. Never forgot a word of it. And that big magic brain of yours put the pieces together."

He nodded. "Pretty much."

"Uh huh. You guys are…interesting. You're real pieces of work. That's kind of a compliment, actually." She stood. "You know, if someone could give me a ride back to Mountain View I'd be real appreciative. This is a hell of a long way to pay for a taxi."

Reid dropped his spent cigarette into the ashtray. "Are you sure you don't want to stay?"

"What would I want to stay for? Look, doctor…what's your name again?"

"Reid."

"Dr. Reid. I've been on my feet for nine hours and I'm fucking tired. And I get to get up tomorrow and do it all again."

"Nursing is a very stressful profession. It's to be admired. I don't know how you find the mental fortitude do what you do." He shrugged. "I couldn't do it."

"Thanks. Anyway." Rhiannon paused to catch her train of thought. "I don't need to be here. I should probably go home and try to unwind enough to get some sleep."

"What if you remember something? Something important?"

"How am I supposed to know that? What's important and what isn't?"

"The smallest thing…hold on." He stopped talking and groped his back pocket. He pulled out his phone and checked the display. He answered it. "Yeah. I'm out here having a smoke break and Rhiannon's out here with me. No, it was accidental. I'm done. I'll be right there."

Rhiannon shouldered her purse. "What's going on?"

"Dr. Young is out," he said.


	19. Carl's Dream (II)

He cuts the bell. He does it over and over again, cold skin that turns into stone and back into flesh and then into stone again. A torrent of tiny red ants carries itself into the shape of blood, their tiny feet laughing. Muttering. He cuts _the bell into her cheek_ and _calls for Coyoxauhqui_ with the shape of the sound of the hummingbird wings and his hand is never as steady as hers. Never as steady. He wills it but will is not enough. There is too much humming. He concentrates. Scatter the stars hone them with the flake of the obsidian the dark spaces shattered into

He looks up. Feels the scorn of four suns that refuse to set and bleed bleed bleed fire into the sky. Ceaseless fire, endless heat. Eternal evening that knows the temple and cooks its deep bones. Red light falling over all. Hot red raw light making soot-colored shadows across his hands. He thinks past the strangeness and tastes a new flavor, bathwater and sinister perfume

_Carl I am in cem-anáhuac yoyótli_

He stands. The statue breathes at his feet turns into stone and out of it and into it, flashing back and forth, cut crack cut crack and the blood-ants are spilling out of the bell, running away from the smooth visage, the sleeping profile, tattoos scratched into the luminous skin. The ants are swarming everywhere, thinking about the heat and the smell of blood. He looks down the long flight of stairs to see

Small brown girl. Little shit girl. Little shitty thing leaving her mud-footprints on the face of his hallowed death. The silk gloaming wings veil the face of the sky. He makes his voice the voice of thunder and gnashing rocks and all of his bellowing outrage shivers in the bones, the stones, his fingers, those trees, the obsidian shattered with a life and voice of its own keening

_My own my meztli my moon my goddess mine_

"WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?"

The sky splits apart and the inky black void rushes in, filling everything, demolishing the world into peace.


	20. Home

"Where is she?"

Hotch looked up as Reid came into the conference room. "She's puking." He glanced at Rhiannon. "Adele is with her. They've requested some time." He closed a folder. "They'll be with us shortly."

"Ms. Heath." Morgan circled the table and held out a hand. She took it. He smiled. "Supervisory Special Agent Derek Morgan." He released her hand. "Thanks for sticking around. Would you like some coffee?"

She glanced at Rossi. "No thanks."

Morgan pulled out a chair. "Have a seat, then."

"Thanks." She sat down and crossed her legs. She tucked her purse under the chair. "It's just Rhiannon. This Ms. Heath stuff is just…no." She folded her arms. "That goes for all of you. I know you're trying to be polite and all, but at this point there really is no point. Is there?"

"I suppose not," said Rossi.

"Then Rhiannon it is," said Morgan.

Dr. Miriam opened the door.

"How is she?" asked Hotch.

"All right," she sighed. "She's all right. Though she's some shaken up."

"We'd like to interview her," said Reid. "If she's ready for it."

"She's writing down what she remembers while it's still fresh." Dr. Miriam walked to the table. She leaned over and flattened her hands on the wood. "She'll e-mail the document when she's finished with it to your PDAs. She's willing to be interviewed on the condition that she controls the interview. If she wants to stop, you stop. Don't push." She straightened up and smoothed the front of her blouse. "She's had a very traumatic experience."

"We understand," said Hotch. "And thank you. Agents Morgan and Prentiss will be conducting the interview. Where is she now?"

"I'll take you. Follow me."

Prentiss smoothed the front of her slacks and Morgan drained off his coffee before tossing the cup into the trash. Dr. Miriam disappeared through the door. Both of them crossed the room and followed.

Rhiannon addressed herself to Hotch. "I want to go home."

Reid sighed and pursed his lips. He doodled in the margins of his notes.

"All right." Hotch leaned back in his chair. "If you're sure."

Rhiannon uncrossed her legs. "I'm sure."

Rossi stood. "I'm on it."

Hotch looked at him. "Are you sure?"

Rhiannon picked up her purse and stood. She walked toward the door and hung back.

Rossi pulled keys out of his pocket. "It's done."

* * *

Katherine sat on the edge of the bed, the synaptic suit loosened at the throat but still stuck to her skin. Disconnected from the computers, the sweat management system embedded in the suit was disabled, and as she hunched over the tray table and fought with her panicked flood of words she felt the sweat crawling out of her, wriggling into the breathless space between skin and suit. Everything hurt, everything ached, each emotion felt like splinters driven into the walls of her mind. Fragments of images pushed between her shaking words and the fought them. The IV fed a slow drip of glucose and traces of sedative into her bloodstream. The spinning in her head started to calm.

She took a deep breath and began to write.

* * *

Rhiannon's boot heels hit the floor like cracking ice. Rossi matched her stride and their footfalls overlapped, one set sharp and the other dull but full of force, the long white floors subdued in their silence and by the tight angles of their moving bones. They hit the parking lot and he cut ahead of her. She didn't follow so much as get pulled into his wake while dark air that still reeked of midday heat flew into her face and the skin on her forehead prickled with evaporating sweat. He unlocked the doors. The headlights flashed and two short sharp chirps struck her nerve endings. She opened the door and climbed into the passenger side, folding herself into the seat, holding her torso like a strung bow. She fastened her seatbelt. He shut his door and put the keys in the ignition. She watched him out of the corners of her eyes. His wrist tensed. His body went still and the air rushed out of him, loosened and flooding. She breathed it in.

He looked at her. She glanced out the window before looking over, her eyes leading the slow turn in her neck. He leaned back in the seat, his knees loose in their jeans and the fingers of one hand lazy against the lower curve of the steering wheel. She rested her cheek on the headrest. He didn't look away. She held his gaze until her muscles itched and her quelled restlessness kindled pink flames that climbed her neck. Heat flared into the hollows of her cheeks. A long darkened moment tinged with sodium vapor light slid between them. It curled up, settled down. Its long tail tickled the inside of her chest. She opened her mouth to breathe. Both of his hands rested on the bottom of the steering wheel, the wrists loose. Her knees shifted toward him. She closed her mouth and looked out the windshield. She counted the painted lines floating ghostly in the sectioned darkness and thought about his hands. The pulse of her blood cleaved to them and whispered of their distance.

Her gaze returned to his face. It touched the space between his eyebrows, brushed across the crooked set of his mouth. She thought of the air that had been in his lungs, its moisture and heat. He peered into the hollow of her throat, into the red flower. It pulsed like a tiny heart. His eyes followed the lines of her nose. He touched the keys, then cranked the ignition. The car rumbled to life. He put the car in reverse, braced his palm on the back of her headrest, and craned his neck. His eyes shifted toward the back windshield as he turned the wheel. "Are we going to the hospital?"

"That's where my car is."

"All right."

"Wait."

He stopped the car. "What do you mean, wait?"

"Park it."

"Why?"

"Do you have to question every single goddamned thing?"

"Well, yes," he said, easing the car back into the space. "Actually, I do."

"I need to get out for a minute."

He killed the engine. "Are you all right?"

She unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the door.

"Rhiannon, would you please answer the question?"

She climbed out.

He leaned over the passenger seat. "Rhiannon."

She ducked down a little. "I need you to get out, too."

He sighed. "What is this?"

She slammed the door shut.

"For Christ's sake," he muttered. "All right, I'm getting out." He opened the door and found her waiting. He stood and closed the door. "What?"

"I need to do something."

His eyebrows went up. "And?"

"I need you to hold still for it."

"Uh…"

She didn't break eye contact. "Will you do it?"

"I need to know what 'it' is."

She put her hand over his tie. "I'm all right."

"Rhiannon…"

"Shhh. This is off-time now." Her fingers closed around the length of silk. "This isn't about your goddamned case. It's not about Carl." She touched the knot. "This is about a kiss. Do you want it?"

He released his breath. "That's a hell of a question."

She tilted her head. "Yeah. I believe in getting this stuff out of the way and I am too damn old for that kissing-in-the-car bullshit." Her smile was slow and sly. "It's a long drive back to Vegas. Not super long, but long enough to know that I don't want to be wondering the whole way back to Mountain View whether I should've done this right now. So I'm doing it." She leaned in. "Right now."

"And if I say no?"

"The fun stops."

"All right."

She put an arm around his neck and leaned forward, lifting her lips to his ear. "You need to do something about that gun," she whispered. "The one the U.S. Government issued to you." She grazed the lobe with her nose. "Not the one your parents issued to you."

He laughed. "Well, I'm not taking it off. So you can forget it."

"Can't you slide it over?"

"It's not so easy as that."

"It's." She flicked her hip into the holster. "Bumping me. Yeah. Like that. It has a beef with my hipbone."

He held her hip and pressed the bone with his thumb. "That's not one I've heard before."

She looked up from where she had been watching his fingers. As he stroked the shape of her hip through her jeans, she tilted her face and brought her mouth to his.

Her lips were soft and her body loosened in his arms until the tip of her tongue glazed the inside of his lip. It was a quick ignition, one that brought goosebumps to his skin and mad fire to his muscles. Soon there was too much breath, rambling oxygen tempting the instability of her tongue rolling in his mouth. He touched the ivory velvet of her hair. Her hands on him, fingers yearning for skin. He dragged the kiss down into the gutter, one tight hand on her breast. Her stony nipple sang in the rhythm of her broken breath and nuzzled into his open palm. She broke the seal.

"Too much," she gasped.

He took her face in his hands. "Shoulda thought of that." He covered her mouth with his before it could speak.

He pushed her into the car and kissed her face raw, releasing a trembling ghost of luscious pain. It filled the lips of her cunt until the taste bloomed on the back of her tongue and by the sudden ferocity in his mouth she knew that he tasted it too; he kissed as if trying to reach all the way down and lick the blood out of her clit. She moaned and arched her back and wrenched her face to one side, covering his mouth with her hand. "This is too much for a parking lot," she panted.

He pulled down her hand. "You're right."

"The parking lot can't handle it." She started to giggle.

He kissed her neck. "Definitely not."

"Stop that."

He put his hands up and took a small step back. "Stopped."

She giggled. "All right, all right. I'm ready. I'm ready. I can go on. Now that I've crossed kissing The Great David Rossi off my bucket list…"

His eyebrows went up. "You've heard of me. You're kidding."

"Yeah." She gave him a dazzling smile. "And no, I'm not." She moved around the rear of the car. "So let's go."

He furrowed his brow. "I can't believe you never…"

"You've been had. It's okay." She grinned. "Let it go. It only hurts the first time."

He shook his head and opened the door and climbed into the car. "So…the hospital?"

"Yeah." Rhiannon settled herself into the passenger seat. She flipped open the visor and peered at her face. "I want to go home."

He started the engine.


	21. Stars

Rhiannon went up to the roof; she needed to be close to the sky and the roof was the closest, even though she wasn't supposed to be up there. The super would have a shit fit. He was always on her for smoking up there even though she never left her butts and was careful to do it at night when no small children would see her. Tonight there was no one to see her. She sat down and let the cat crawl into her lap. She felt the heat of his small body melt into her skin, carried there by the rumble of his purr. It was hot and the stars melted a little, pulling apart, falling down into her eyes.

It was easier to think about Carl. Up here, away from all the responsibilities of the ground. She smelled his skin subdued by the hospital and shivered with the memory. She wept and the tears went unnoticed, coaxed away from her cheeks by the desert's eternal greed.

_I'm so tired_. She propped her back against the central air unit and wished for a bottle. She wished for a hard drunk, wished for someone to share it with, wanted a meteor streaking across the sky. She wanted it to be green. She wanted it to be Molly falling back down to earth on the flaming wings of Huitzilopochtli. She touched the red spot on her throat and willed it full of blood. She willed it into bloom and packed it full of sweet-scented memories. For the first time in many years she longed for the soothing presence of her mother. Mirage abandoned her. He went to a spot near the stairwell and craned his neck around to lick at his tail. She closed her eyes and the night wind came, touching the side of her face. It brushed the raw pink places on her lips. Her breath stirred to life.

Rhiannon unzipped her jeans and put her hand inside her panties. The ghosts of those long-ago chains came and settled themselves around her wrists, pulled her fingers deeper until she couldn't untangle herself from thoughts of Rossi, of his mouth, of the strange love hummed by Carl's skin up through the blade of the scalpel. The desert burrowed through the denim but could not steal the oasis hidden there. At orgasm she broke down, hard and fierce, the tears flowing down her face, the waters squeezing out of her cunt. The dry air kissed away the moisture. Rhiannon opened her eyes and the sky picked up its starry skirt, whirling it around. Traffic noise clung the tops of the palms.

She touched herself and gasped back to life.


	22. Inside

Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of fucking rye. But for Katherine it was like saying these things backward: rye fucking of full pocket, a sixpence of song, a sing.

She went down.

At the bottom of the chemical ladder there were dripping tunnels. She stepped into the room with the window to nowhere and saw the bathtub where he dissembled his first kill. A lady taken apart, divested of her flesh, a lost man looking for a lost place to keep all of his blackness and brought to fury when he looked in between her muscles and found no space for himself. Carved open her torso and found no crawlspace. Stain of rage living in the walls and whispering, always whispering. The blood in the water. No body. He'd cleaned it up. _I am a mess_, she whispered, feeling the words come out of the damp air and settle inside of her. _I am such a mess._

_I want to talk about Julia Hickson._

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

_Carl?_

Rumbling overhead. Tinkling of chimes. The floor awakening beneath her feet, rising up inside her feet.

_You feel pretty._

_Carl, where is Julia Hickson?_

The water in the tub churned. Crimson boil. _No names_, the bubbling water whispered. _No numbers._

Katherine tossed it out like a lit firecracker: _Rhiannon Heath._

The walls shivered apart, pulling themselves into beads of condensed stone. The darkness melted away. The stone pulled into itself like water. The walls lightened, then darkened, wisped away into purple twilight before exhaling back into darkened bricks. The ceiling pulled apart for the stars. They fell, hanging low and pregnant with adamantine, turning and throwing off needles of light. The walls snatched away with a sound of heavy cloth. Twilight poured in and filled all of her senses, thick with cloves and the scent of broken stones. She sensed his movement all around in the humming of the stars, felt it reflect in the gleam of the obsidian floor. Fear sharpened the inside of her mouth.

_More._

_You miss her._

Katherine opened her eyes and saw an alabaster statue. Though it wore the garb of a goddess borne of obsidian and heart's blood, she recognized the shape of the nose, the set of the mouth. It stood with a hand outstretched toward a gloaming horizon. Hummingbirds embedded in the pale stone struggled to get free, their broken wings twisted. Fire ants crawled out of a deep cut in the cheek. They swarmed over the still lips, dripped off the chin. As she watched a blackened vine laced with blades for thorns twined tight around the arms and unfolded cobalt blooms that fluttered toward the moon. The limbs twisted, the skin roughening into scales, and they lost their shape like melting wax, sliding into the thick trunks of albino pythons. The snakes twisted out of a falling pile of pale feathers and slithered across the floor, crawling with red ants, entangled in vines that withered. The hummingbirds broke free and flew in circles. The ants tried to run away. The snakes wove themselves into a circle. The hummingbirds described graceful column of spirals while iridescent feathers disintegrated into plumes of snow that fell softly upward. Katherine smelled something like alcohol and seawater steeped in oleander, rubbed across the broken backs of cacti.

_More._

She felt his heat but couldn't see him. _She's near_.

A chorus rained down from the sky, each individual star murmuring _cem-anáhuac yoyótli_; the warm syllables drizzling down all over her skin. They landed like feathers and made her shiver. _Yes_, she said, not knowing what she was saying yes to but feeling it all through her flesh. She stepped out of it and the words followed. _Yes. Yes._

_I want._

_First, tell me about Julia._

_I want!_

She struggled to draw something up out of her surroundings. She tried to shape the darkness but there was nothing. Below the heat simmered his coldness, the crystals tucked away between the plates of his armor and the childish keening of the skin beneath. She smelled the mud he felt in her flesh, the stink of shit and ordure left behind after a hard rain. She herself had no power. All of her leverage lay compressed in a tiny luminescent sphere tucked in the palm of her hand, the place where all of her thoughts and memories of Rhiannon lay. He smelled the pearl. His attention sharpened and focused upon it. Katherine tightened her fingers around it. Sickly light frosted her knuckles. A carrion bird cried out somewhere, caught in the sticky depths of its nightmare.

_Give._

_No. Julia. Tell me about Julia first. Then you may have it._

The carrion bird screamed. Shrieks and growls joined it until there was black outrage everywhere, welling up, terrifying primal noise distilled down into the throats of miscarried chimeras. She trembled. She sharp smell of urine sliced across her senses. Her thumb hovered over the alert. There was movement. He came out of the darkness, a gorgon made of dried blood and eyes trapped in a wild face, the lines raw where the hummingbird shape had been carved into the skin on his dirty forehead. His hair matted into thick dreads and tied with long gore-stained feathers. The stench of rotten blood backed up in her throat. He circled her, in his loose hand a _maquahuitl_, the long ironwood sword of the ancient world. Around its edges gleamed chips of green obsidian and the stone was hungry, she felt its ravenousness like the slimy waters of a rotten pond just waiting to devour. He didn't seem like he'd been this big; reduced to a hospital bed, all of his dead weight covered in a pristine white sheet hadn't prepared her for this twist of overbearing muscle.

_Want._

A small child ran between his legs. He was pale, dressed a pair of blue swim trunks. His reddish hair hadn't been cut in a while. He shrank back into the darkness and noticed the expression on Katherine's face. He held a finger to his lips.

_Shhhh_. The voice swirled into her ear like a half-formed thought. _When I'm small he doesn't see me._

For the first time, Katherine felt terrified. Panic fluttered up inside her and burned between each rib, drawing them tighter and tighter around her heart.

_I know the water goddess_. Childish breath with the faint scent of fabric softener. _I can take you there._

* * *

"I don't know what's going on in there," said Dr. Miriam. "The monitors are showing distress."

Hotch looked up at her. "Is it enough to pull the plug?"

"No." She shook her head. "Not yet."

Rossi paced. He made wide circles in the control room and went out into the hallway and looped a few there before returning to the control room. He looked at the woman through the glass. "I don't know about this," he said. "I feel hinky. Anyone else feel hinky?"

"I'm no more comfortable with the idea than you are," said Hotch. "But we have to do what we have to do."

"It's gonna get dangerous, I think," said Rossi. "Fast. It's just a hunch, but I can't shake it."

"I've been over Katherine's report of her first time in and the transcript of the interview," said Reid. "I can't find anything. I cross-referenced some of the significant imagery and linguistic details and sent them to Garcia. She's coming up with nothing."

"Goddammit, this is her _mind_," said Rossi. "Who knows what kind of crazy shit he has going on in there? This is like sending a foot soldier into a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Alone."

Hotch said nothing.

"Would you do it?"

"Yes." Hotch cleared his throat. "Yes, I would."

"Good." Rossi stopped pacing and looked at his watch. "Because you may have to."

"I'm aware of the time, Dave," said Hotch.

"I fuckin hate this." Rossi rubbed his face. "It feels like a big circle jerk."

A soft bell chimed. Dr. Miriam looked up at a flashing red light. She hit an intercom. "Get her out of there. Do it now."


	23. Remember

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Centeotl is the Aztec god of maize (corn). A cenote is a limestone sinkhole filled with water, somewhat like a pond in the bottom of a quarry. The Mayans used them in ritual sacrifice.

_You don't have any tape or at least I couldn't find any_

You'll have to tape it later I guess I don't have to do it right now

It'll still scar if you don't leave the plastic on it but the scars will set better with it

This isn't work you don't have to work right now

She closed her mouth and blushed

I'm sorry it's okay

She laid down on her stomach beside him and tucked her arms

Beneath her chest and put her head on the pillow

* * *

Rhiannon let her hands fall into the dishwater. The window over the kitchen sink was open and she looked across the parking lot to the ass-end of the building across the way, the shaded parking slots numbered and faded by the sun. There was an alley in there, between low brick buildings. She'd found her cat back there with gray velvet feet cut open on the broken beer bottles. She remembered him cowering under a ragged pink oleander and the scent of its sticky-sweet blossoms mixing in with the trash. She coaxed him out with a bit of tuna from her sandwich and bundled him into the car and took him to the vet. The Pink Siamese wasn't open yet. She knew Steve from Bull's place on Tropicana. Sometimes she and Steve hung out. One time they drove out to Hoover Dam and smoked a bowl and Steve threatened to climb on top of the rails and do the butterfly dance. Kicked off the dam for throwing Carl's Jr drinks into the distant water, watching them turn over and over and spray bright blue Powerade like antifreeze mixed in with the blood of sapphires. Shit, man. Bull's place, The Loaded Dice, parked on top of a strip club. You had to dodge fake titties to get up the stairs because most of the time between sets you'd see some honeys out there snorting coke out of a scarlet talon in the flickering fluorescent light and the stairwell always smelled like broken down Jovan Musk, cigarettes, and the inside of a gym sock. All that buzzing light made the young girls look old. One time she saw one of them, a bottle blonde from the Midwest somewhere, come into the emergency room at Mountain View with her button nose foaming blood and her spastic eyes rolled up under lids that were like windowshades. Next time Rhiannon saw her in the stairwell, a tiny piece of real estate was missing from her eyes.

_Man, that was a long time ago._

She dried off her hands and let the plates soak a little longer. She glanced at the turquoise readout on the microwave.

_I should be in bed._

There wasn't going to be much sleeping and what little bit did decide to show up would arrive tattered and stinking with cold. It would crawl out of the air conditioning, wrap itself around her mind, and shiver apart into dreams.

She thought back to her last drug screening. She longed for a joint but didn't dare risk it. She didn't want to flag her urine and she didn't know what would come to her if she smoked. Sometimes the things that came out of the slumbering parts of herself weren't kind. She stared out the window, at the alley, imagining the oleander and the careless strew of broken glass, dangerous confetti, the cockroaches that gleamed like polished amber in the muddled streetlights. Last year there had been a colony of red ants nested in there. Someone's dog hand gotten into them and the howls still twanged in her spine like slivers of shrapnel. Oh, how the poor little thing had howled. The dog was all right, but she learned from Maria downstairs that the ants had swarmed all over the poor baby's eyes. The image made her nauseous. The viciousness of it, the wrongness, a cunning hive mind burrowing its way into a creature's most sensitive parts. It wrought havoc with her lizard brain. Could insects hear the howl of pain? Did it register somewhere? Did sounds vibrating at a certain frequency stoke them into a fever pitch? The two apartment buildings had gone in together to get rid of it. They'd cleaned up some of the glass, too, but two weeks later the alley belonged once again to the shattered bottles, the spilled trash, and the cockroaches. Rhiannon walked past the fiesta cookie jar. Inside the jar, her small bag of dope languished tucked away inside a rubber lemon.

She stripped off her clothes and sat naked on the rumpled bed. She closed her eyes and pictured the worn-out numbers painted into the corrugated awning. _225\. 226. 227 with a break in the 7. 228. 229. 230._

She took a breath.

After she'd cut him, she and Carl fell asleep. He fell before her, all of his bones loosening like stones upon the bed. She touched his breathing skin and after awhile her own breath lulled into the same pattern. There was pussy-scented darkness. There were dreams. She remembered bright colors, bright sun, bright everything caught in their dark webs. He woke up and she came out of sleep to feel his eyes on her lids. She opened her eyes, looked into his face, brushed the plastic stuck to his raw chest with the tips of her fingers. He didn't need to ask. She pushed her tongue into the cuts through the plastic and he moaned. He grew hard and restless as a lightning rod. She climbed over him and they fucked, all the sweetness brought forth in the kiss of the blade leaking out and filling the air, making it heavy, enraging their bodies with oxygen. Each thrust of his cock jammed her back into herself. When she came her flesh wrung itself tight, furling up like a bud, squeezing free every last drop of need. She collapsed into her unraveled consciousness, dizzy with blood and swooning in big draughts of flesh-steeped ecstasy. She tangled her fingers all up with his. She didn't know how her body could keep going off like this, bursting into fireworks, taking only the ashes of her emotions and mixing them in with sweat.

In the welter of shadows, adrift in gasping recovery, he began to talk.

_I listen to the talking water sometimes but only when it talks about the hummingbirds. You know, how they come back every year? I always know when._

There's this place. I never told no one.

You're so pretty. Like the moonlight.

I could take you out there. There's a cornfield, like Centeotl. They flay it in the seedtime. I like to watch. There's a farm but with water inside. My cenote. And trees. Tall ones that go all the way to heaven.

I like the way you come because you smell like blood.

Good springs, fills the cenote up. There's a water goddess.

He held her body tight to his body with the ferocity of a child. She remembered the dampened roots of his hair, the alchemy of his sweat and the nicotine he'd inhaled earlier that day blending in with a smell like metal giving up its skin and shedding tiny dry flakes of blood. The sweetness of drugstore shampoo fading, like a dandelion blossom crushed into the pavement. The bitter salt of his tears. _I don't want to hurt you. Don't want._ He stroked her velvety soft scalp. _Please. Tell me if you want to cry so I can stop it._ She'd said oh honey and it takes a lot and don't worry about it, I'm tough. I'm one bad-assed mama, baby, and if you want to make me sad it's gonna take some doin. She rubbed his back. She pressed his forehead into her neck and patted his big shoulder blades. _Don't want to_, he mumbled. _Don't let it_. I'm not the demanding kind, she'd said, unaware of the chill inside his mind and the rumbling voices of the stones. You can do what you want. I'm not gonna come over all weeping on you. I'm not going to jerk your strings around with my box of Kleenex. _You're so pretty. Like the moonlight. Like the pearls inside you_. She'd asked him if he wanted to share a joint and he'd said yes. She'd gone downstairs and fished the joint out of her jeans pocket and lit up. The pungent smoke swirled toward the ceiling, drifted back down in lazy veils and made everything all right. It made her calm. It made him calm. They laughed. She wanted more sex but he was too wasted so she turned on her back and slipped a finger into her pussy lips. He put an arm around her and watched her face with fascination, calling out the flush of her skin, murmuring at the dilation of her pupils, the quickening pull of her breath. She wondered if she could go off again. She did, but these waves came deep and slow, rocking outward to the edges of the bed like her hand was a stone dropped in the center of a white pool. She shivered out to the edges and back again. _Like little ringing bells_, he whispered, and she giggled. Slipped off the face of the world, folding back up into sleep.

Rhiannon pressed her fingers into her temples. The old words echoed in her chest.

_I don't want to hurt you._

A burst of icy adrenaline.

_Don't let it._

Her belly knotted into a fist. She leapt off the bed and ran into the bathroom, making it to the toilet just in time. She skidded to her knees, embracing the porcelain god. She threw up until there was nothing left and her throat continued to expel long grinding strings of bile. Her hand trembled as she wiped the oily sweat out of her eyes. She dug the heels of her hands into the sides of her head, her legs folded up and her ankles askew beneath her. She propped her elbows on the plastic seat, retching until she began to weep with frustration.

She banged the lever with the side of her fist. She sat back on the cold tiles and pulled a wad of toilet paper off the dispenser and scrubbed her mouth with it. The beard-abraded skin stung. _Being alone was a stupid move_, she thought. _When I was out there I could fight the remembering. Here I'm stripped bare, left alone with the voices. I'm going to think about this all night._

She got up. Wavered on her feet. Turned to the sink. Filled up a glass of water. Rinsed the puke taste out of her mouth.

_My cenote._

You're so pretty.

Rhiannon closed her eyes.


	24. Water Goddess

"We can't disengage. It's too dangerous."

Dr. Miriam knocked on the glass. "What's happening in there?"

"She's lost."

"Well, send her a goddamned beacon! Go in through the abort system." Dr. Miriam flung up her hands. "Shock her back."

"We've already tried that."

"Did you try reversing the feed?"

"That didn't work, either."

Dr. Miriam clenched her fists. "Fuck!"

Rossi looked at her. "So what does this mean? Does someone have to go in and get her?"

"Yes. Yes. Oh shit. Shit. I knew better. I shouldn't have let you people talk me into this." She sat down on the edge of a couch, burying her face in her hands. "I'm the only one with any experience. It should be me who goes in."

"I'm sensing there's an issue here," said Hotch. "What is it?"

"I'm the master programmer," she whispered. "I need to be out in case something goes wrong. I'm stuck out here. And I have to send in someone who has no idea what they're doing and try and talk them through this, and…and there's no way to adequately prepare any of you for the horrors you'll see. They defy description. The things mad artists painted in the fever dreams can't compare to this. If she goes too far in, if she believes that whatever Stargher is showing her is real, it could be catastrophic. If he hurts her, she'll bleed. If he kills her, she'll die." She looked at Hotch. "Despite what modern culture would have you believe, there's no separating the body and the mind."

"I've seen a lot of horrors in my life," said Rossi.

Hotch looked at him. "Dave…"

"Don't you 'Dave' me. I'll be all right. I've got more experience than anyone working on this team. You know that."

Hotch cleared his throat. "I'm the leader of this team."

"Yeah," said Rossi. "And that's exactly why it shouldn't be you. You're needed topside. What do you say?"

"I don't think it's a good idea."

"I don't either," said Rossi. "But it doesn't matter. This needs to get done."

"All right." Hotch took a deep breath. He nodded to Dr. Miriam. "Have your people prep him."

Dr. Miriam put a hand on his arm. "Agent Rossi, are you sure about this?"

"I'm sure."

* * *

Katherine finds herself in a cornfield.

She hears the whisper of the little boy's feet as they tread the soft dark soil, the cornstalks muttering against him. The heavy air smells like dirty bed sheets and motor oil and grass stains, suntan lotion, the salt of the sea. She touches one of the leaves and feels distant words humming in her fingertips. The leaves are tall and broad, an oversaturated shade of green that screams fertility at the nonsensical sky. Overhead is bright and full of hard-edged sunshine, a brittle robin's egg shade of blue. Toward the horizon it is dark, softening into a familiar dusk of torn plums, pewter ashes, and bruised skin. Stars glitter like shards of broken glass embedded in raw flesh. The silhouette of a tree stands out in stark contrast against the drifting darkness. It is huge; the branches reach up into the spaces between the stars and disappear.

_Are you coming?_

_Yes_. Katherine starts to walk, touching the leaves as she passes them by. Each leaf strikes faint chords of memory.

Tickle _ironed me cause I was bad_

Brush _like the dolls_

Catch in her hair _it was my baptism_

Her toe snags in the roots _the Xipe he won't hurt you so hold still for the bone_

The field opens up into a circle pressed down into the corn. At the center is a bonfire made up of long branches and human bones. It burns hot and bright, marking the place where sunlight softens into the purple darkness. The air is gray. On the far side of the fire is a tall man whirling on unsteady feet. At first she cannot see him; he is blocked by the reaching flames. Sparks fly up and circle back down, winking out before they can touch down on the flattened cornstalks. His feet make broken circles; his body weaves an unsteady ring around the burning heart of the fire. Katherine smells the sweet meat of new blood and the stink of old, all of it tied up in the freshness of new corn, the bland thick earthy scent. The man is covered in the yellowing skin of another. The dead face flaps over the living one, affixed by the hair into the knotted hanks of the dancer, and the dead hands flop below strong wrists. The dead feet jiggle, the soles slapping the ground in counterpoint, a quick one-two, one-two, the second beat weaker than the first, an echo drawn in dust. The fire crackles. The stench of him is overpowering: overturned graves, flyblown animal carcasses strewn across the breakdown lane of a fast-moving highway. A breeze blows up from the ground, lifting the flames, saturating the air with the dizzying sweetness of night-blooming flowers. He dances past her, long feathers and tails of hair flying out, a pair of long slimy thighbones whirling over his head in complicated patterns. Jawbones lashed to his upper arms, the strings of teeth draped across his chest, the stretched holes in the dead skin where it laces tight to his calves, his forearms, his back. Mesmerizing, terrifying, quivering awe struck deep in her breast and taking root in the flesh of her heart, blooming like a spine-backed carrion-flower, like a soft-petaled moon flower.

His feet stomp the ground: one-two, one-two, one-two, one-two.

_What do I do?_

The little boy voice says _wait_.

She holds still. The Xipe's posture shifts and she knows that he knows she is there. He glides back around again, twirling his bones. The firelight attaches itself to them and runs down their pale yellow length, humming low and strong as they slice through the air. His breath is a trapped thing, a bellows laboring far past its own capabilities. _He dances for days_, the little boy whispers, his voice the rustling corn, his breath sweetened in silk. _He dances for weeks_. The Xipe comes closer, each movement of his body in tune with the others, his limbs loosened into the slinking of a great cat and seized by the inherent grace of something wild. The bent stalks crackle. She sees the dirty eyes behind the carrion-mask and they are like Carl's eyes; darkened far beyond the human scope, peering at her over the black rim of consciousness. They are wells in which all of the mechanisms of night are contained. They hook into her gaze. He spins the bones in tandem, slowing them, holding them quivering over her shoulders. She looks up into the loosened face, into the slackened eye sockets. His muscles tremble with the effort to remain still. His breath smells like chocolate and mushrooms.

_No_, she thinks. _He dances for life_.

The Xipe looks into her eyes. Like a cornered animal she looks back. Stars loosen their grip on the sky.

He rests the bones on her shoulders.

A swelling of some black thing, some ancient surge of tidal feeling swirls up from her feet, through the roots in the ground to her skin, and takes the strength out of her knees. She opens her mouth and her tongue is coated in bitter blood, stinging with the salts of a thousand generations. She hits the ground and her legs fold up beneath her, spine curling into itself like a leaf, a shoot unfolding. Her eyes close and the fire flickers in her lids. She takes a breath that throbs into sobs, her heart swelling, pounding with the rhythm of his feet: one-two, one-two, one-two.

_It's all in the heart_.

_Come on_, the boy whispers.

She opens her eyes and finds herself in the true darkness. The stars crowd close and the wind is on her face like velvet fingers. The perfume is thick, crawling along the bare ground like mist, bitter and sensuous. The trunk of the tree is immense, made out of glass, filled with aquamarine. Inside floats a woman. Her hair is like coils of smoke, her skin pearlescent, her lips like breaking dawn. Her eyes are open and staring. They are the color of water. Her hand drifts toward the glass. The pale pointed fingertips graze the inside and a sweet tone resonates through the night, shivering the leaves on the trees, stirring fireflies out of the corn. They spiral up and up and up, winking, transforming into stars.

Her arm jerks. The fingers splay out and start to shake. Katherine grabs her wrist and looks up to the sky.

_I'm not signaling. Dammit, I'm not signaling!_

The little boy kneels in front of the giant tank.

_The good springs_, he says. _It's holy water_.

* * *

In the hallway, Reid's phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket and squinted at the readout. He flipped it open. He sounded confused. "Hello?"

"This is Dr. Reid, right?"

"Uh, yeah. Sorry. This is Supervisory Special Agent Reid. Who's this? Wait a minute…is that you, Rhiannon?"

"Yes! Listen, I was trying to get to sleep and just thinking, you know, going over all that old shit…well, not going over it, more like being haunted by it, but I remembered something."

Reid took out a notepad. "I'm listening. Go ahead."

"He said all this stuff, shit that barely made any sense. Stuff about cenotes, and cornfields, and I don't know what the fuck. But he said good springs. That there were good springs to fill the cenote up."

Reid scribbled it down. His brow furrowed. "I'm not following."

"Good springs! Good…look, Dr. Reid, check out a Nevada map. There's a town. He said this stuff about a water goddess and that he wanted to take me there. I didn't think anything of it at the time, I just wrote it off to…too much sex, I don't know, something. I wasn't all there. It had been a long night."

"There's a town," prompted Reid.

"Yeah! Goodsprings. It's off fifteen south, maybe forty miles from here. There's a cornfield and he said it's like a farm with water. That's the best I got."

"That's great," said Reid. "Thank you very much, Rhiannon. You've been a big help. I've gotta go."

"Yeah."

Reid hung up the phone and dashed into the room. Rossi, Hotch, and Dr. Miriam all looked at him. He tore the top sheet off his pad and held it up. "I've got something."


	25. Drown

They found her. It was a corrugated farm, barren and dusty-dry one side and green on the other, rows upon rows of rustling corn. Shading the place, there stood one impossibly large tree. They cut the chains and stormed the doors. In the basement they found the huge tank. Someone shot out the thick glass, one two three four bullets, and the water broke. It came rushing out, flooding girl and cameras and FBI agents alike.

* * *

Two days later, Rossi went to Rhiannon's apartment building. He stood outside of it for a long moment, the slanting rays of the setting sun blazing at his back, and he looked up at the stucco façade. A plant that he didn't know grew along the sides of the building near the sidewalks that edged the parking lot, green-feather leaves and flaming blossoms bright against the pale flanks of the three-story building. There was a tiled fountain that smelled strongly of chlorine. Lantana twined around the bases of decorative lampposts. Multicolored roses bloomed and ranged with deceptive ease along the iron fencing. It interested him, the lengths people went to believe that they weren't living in a desert. Shower flowers upon the sand, and even so the character of the land will remain the same. He found the stairs up to her door and climbed them. The stairs and the door were painted sage green.

She answered on his second knock. He thought he would say _we found her_, or _we're transferring Carl to the prison hospital_, or maybe _I'm flying out of town in a couple of days_. Instead, he said:

"I want to come in."

She grinned. "I know."

* * *

Rhiannon offered him a beer. He said no thank you, and he took hold of her hands as he said it, his fingers flexing on her fingers. He pulled on her arms, holding them straight down, and this bit of restraint sharpened the sweetness, the instant his mouth came to hers.

This needs to happen on a bed, she said.

Oh yes, he replied. It does.

She unwrapped him a button at a time. It was slow because she needed slow. He inhaled, savoring the reaction of his blood to the touch of her fingers, neither hesitant nor unsure, but soft just the same. Her mouth landed on him like a sunrise. He filled with heat, broke out in shivering droplets of dew. She called him once by his first name and the sound of it tore through him, wreckage like ash spinning in its wake. She caught those tiny whirling bits on her tongue and gave them back, spreading them on his tongue. He moaned into the humid pocket of her mouth.

He closed his eyes and read the textures of her skin, ran his fingers over all of those places where the needles had been. He got her onto her back and used his mouth on the sweet places, the secret spaces where the tiny hairs grew in the direction they wanted his tongue to go. She rose up, arching over the rumpled bed, her belly an ivory arc. He unzipped her jeans and spread the flies apart, resting his forehead on her navel, breathing into the rise and fall of her skin. He slid a hand across her chest, scooping up a breast and holding it for a moment, letting the nipple trail between his thumb and index finger.

How do you want it?

This is fine.

No…how do you want me to fuck you? He curled his hands over the waistband of her jeans and tugged them down over her hips.

I don't know.

He pulled the jeans off her legs. He moved over her, kneeling between her thighs, and dropped down enough to kiss her neck. She ran her fingers through his hair, turning her head so her throat lifted into his lips. She felt the friction of his beard and imagined the flush rising into her skin.

Just this way, she said.

He brought one of her narrow calves up to his shoulder and kissed the plump curve below the knee. His cock pushed down into her like a long slick hungry creature returning to the place from which it came. The breath rushed out of her, then slid back into her lungs. He put his face on hers and thrust with slow hips. Her fingertips traced the length of his spine.

Is that good?

Yes.

His mouth hovered over hers. She kissed him, her teeth pressing back and forth into her lips. He steadied her head with one hand. He licked her tongue.

Dave?

Yes.

More.

He quickened the pace and she dug her heels into the bed, pushing back against him. His breath sharpened. She stroked the back of his head, her fingers loose, the way she would to soothe him. He propped up on his hands, working the angle. She put her hands on his hips, her back getting tight and her neck getting loose. Her head rolled to one side.

It's gonna happen, isn't it?

Yeah…oh…yeah.

Her jaw tightened and tried to hold it back as her hips galloped away from her.

That's it, he said. Good girl.

Her neck bent into a tight arch and her thighs spread apart. Her cunt loosened up, the soft walls fluttering. As he slid out her muscles squeezed. He made a noise of pleasure. He pushed forward, sinking into her grasp. She gripped his shoulders, moaning through her thicket of sweet spasms.

Aw yeah, he said.

In the seconds before he came, he closed his eyes and thought _this is how it feels to drown_.


	26. Epilogue

Fat snowflakes swirled and twirled, drifting with ponderous grace. The road was caked with it, tires pressing down into it like sugar molds. Rhiannon reached out and touched the inside of the windshield. "Eastern snow is so different."

Rossi's hands flexed on the wheel. "Is it?"

"Yes." She slumped, her puffy parka rustling. "It's fatter. It's heavier. It sticks to itself."

"It's no picnic to drive on, let me tell you that."

A semi passed them, kicking up chunks of snow. "Yeah," she said. "Why do you think I'm over here and not over there?"

Rossi glanced at her. Orange streetlight slid over her face in rapid flashes, carving shadows that seemed to breathe into her pale skin. "Does this feel awkward to you?"

"Maybe a little." She looked over. "It's been awhile, hasn't it?"

"Tell me something." The tires slipped a fraction and he steadied the wheel. "Would you've come out here if Carl hadn't died? If—if I hadn't told you that he died?" The crystalline darkness of an overpass flitted through the car. "I don't…oh never mind." He pursed his lips. "Forget I asked."

"You think I'm here because of Carl? Because of that old shit? You honestly think that?" She released a pent-up breath, her voice turning soft. "Maybe I should just go home."

"You aren't going anywhere. Not until this snow quits."

"So how long until we get to your place?"

"What, are you pissed now? Is that it?"

"Look, if I'd wanted to…to mourn Carl's passing, or whatever it is you think I'm doing, I could've done it in Vegas. This is a long way to go to just sit around and go boo-hoo."

"I said forget it. All right?"

"No, I'm not going to forget it, especially since you're the one who brought it up!"

"Look, Rhi. I just…I don't know, okay? I haven't seen you in months and then I tell you that Stargher popped off and…bam! You're on a plane to D.C. So what's up with that?"

"Could you stop analyzing my every move for five goddamned seconds? You aren't the only person with a job, Dave. For fuck's sake! And you think you could turn the heat up in here? I'm freezing."

He cranked the knob into the red. "Better?"

"Not yet." Her teeth chattered. "Maybe soon." The snow drew mesmerizing patterns in the headlights. She pulled her furry hood up around her ears. "The hospital wants to pay for my master's."

"That's great news. Are you going to take it?"

"I don't know. Maybe. It's a sweet deal."

"It is." He glanced at her. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you never asked."

"Well, do you want to talk about this now?"

"I'm thinking about moving out here."

The windshield wipers slashed across the silence.

"Not moving in or anything like that. I want my own place." She sighed and flicked her gaze toward the window. "I…I need a change. I've never lived anywhere but Nevada." Her hands tangled in her lap. "And I'm tired of flying back." She shrugged. "Flying out here isn't so bad, but the flight back makes me tired. I'm tired when I get home. I don't want to be…oh, forget it. Just forget it. I'm not making any sense."

"You're making sense."

"Are we almost to your place?"

He focused on the road. "Almost."

"I need a shower and something to eat." She rubbed her temples. "I need to not be moving through so much space."

Rossi touched the narrow stripe of skin between her glove and her coat. "Soon."


End file.
